Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
The news posted last week for the coronavirus 2019-nCoV, which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. There are less “body count” articles this week and more about what the disease does, how it’s spread, and attempts to find a cure than in weeks past. With the news filled with articles about the pandemic it is impossible for me to get good coverage of all aspects of the disease – but I hope to have a representative sample. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.
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Fact check: Hospitals get paid more if patients listed as COVID-19, on ventilators -Sen. Scott Jensen, R-Minn., a physician in Minnesota, was interviewed by “The Ingraham Angle” host Laura Ingraham on April 8 on Fox News and claimed hospitals get paid more if Medicare patients are listed as having COVID-19 and get three times as much money if they need a ventilator.The claim was published April 9 by The Spectator, a conservative publication. WorldNetDaily shared it April 10 and, according to Snopes, a related meme was shared on social media in mid-April.Jensen took it to his own Facebook page April 15, saying, in part: “How can anyone not believe that increasing the number of COVID-19 deaths may create an avenue for states to receive a larger portion of federal dollars. Already some states are complaining that they are not getting enough of the CARES Act dollars because they are having significantly more proportional COVID-19 deaths.”Jensen said, “Hospital administrators might well want to see COVID-19 attached to a discharge summary or a death certificate. Why? Because if it’s a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for – if they’re Medicare – typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000. But if it’s COVID-19 pneumonia, then it’s $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000.”Jensen clarified in the video that he doesn’t think physicians are “gaming the system” so much as other “players,” such as hospital administrators, who he said may pressure physicians to cite all diagnoses, including “probable” COVID-19, on discharge papers or death certificates to get the higher Medicare allocation allowed under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. The coronavirus relief legislation created a 20% premium, or add-on, for COVID-19 Medicare patients. There have been no public reports that hospitals are exaggerating COVID-19 numbers to receive higher Medicare payments. USA TODAY reached out to Marty Makary, a surgeon and professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, about the claim. Makary said in an email April 21 that “what Scott Jensen said sounds right to me.” Makary did not elaborate, answer additional questions or respond to a request for an interview. USA TODAY reached out to the American Hospital Association and Federation of American Hospitals on April 22, but as of publication had not received a response. Snopes investigated the claim, finding it’s plausible Medicare pays in the range Jensen mentions but doesn’t have a “one-size-fits-all” payment to hospitals for COVID-19 patients.
Scientists Find More Evidence Novel Coronavirus Can Travel On Air Pollution Particles – Scientists are scrambling to find explanations for why the coronavirus outbreak in the Italian north was so much more pervasive and deadly than outbreaks in other parts of Europe, and even other parts of Italy. Some have proposed that Italy’s elderly population might have something to do with it – though Japan’s demographics are similar, and the outbreak in that country has been far less deadly. Now, a team of researchers who have been studying air pollution levels in Italy’s Bergamo Province have found more evidence that the virus can travel on air pollution particles, the Guardian reports, which might offer some insight into the issue. Leonardo Setti at the University of Bologna in Italy, who led the work, said it was important to investigate if the virus could be carried more widely by air pollution.“I am a scientist and I am worried when I don’t know,” he said. “If we know, we can find a solution. But if we don’t know, we can only suffer the consequences.”To be sure, while the scientists found evidence of viral genetic material on air particles, the research offers no insight on whether these particles can actually transmit the virus in a way that would allow it to infect other humans.Here’s more from the Guardian:The Italian scientists used standard techniques to collect outdoor air pollution samples at one urban and one industrial site in Bergamo province and identified a gene highly specific to Covid-19 in multiple samples. The detection was confirmed by blind testing at an independent laboratory.[ … ]The potential role of air pollution particles is linked to the broader question of how the coronavirus is transmitted. Large virus-laden droplets from infected people’s coughs and sneezes fall to the ground within a metre or two. But much smaller droplets, less than 5 microns in diameter, can remain in the air for minutes to hours and travel further.Experts are not sure whether these tiny airborne droplets can cause coronavirus infections, though they know the 2003 Sars coronavirus was spread in the air and that the new virus can remain viable for hours in tiny droplets.But researchers say the importance of potential airborne transmission, and the possible boosting role of pollution particles, mean it must not be ruled out without evidence. Setti isn’t the first researcher to find evidence that air pollution particles could enable the virus to travel further by essentially hitching a ride on the particles. According to the Guardian, two other research projects have arrived at similar findings.
Coronavirus: Eyes could be contagious for weeks, study finds — The coronavirus can linger in patients’ eyes for several weeks and could act as a way of spreading the Covid-19 disease, according new study from Italy. Scientists at Italy’s National Institute for Infectious Diseases hospital in Rome studied the symptoms of an unnamed 65-year-old woman who developed the virus after travelling from the Chinese city of from Wuhan. When the woman developed conjunctivitis – an eye infection causing redness and itchiness – doctors decided to take regular swabs from her eye. They discovered the virus remained present in “ocular samples” up to 21 days after she was admitted to hospital. The team said the findings, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, indicated that eye fluids from coronavirus patients “may be a potential source of infection”. The Italian experts said their research suggested that the eye could not only be an entryway for the virus, but also a source of contagion. The study authors said: “These findings highlight the importance of control measures, such as avoiding touching the nose, mouth, and eyes and frequent hand washing.” Though it’s rarely reported in confirmed Covid-19 cases, doctors have reported some patients hospitalised with the virus suffered from conjunctivitis among their other symptoms. Some experts have recommended people who wear contact lenses to switch to glasses to reduce any risk of transmitting the virus through the eyes.
The biochemistry of how COVID-19 attacks the body: a synopsis of the medical studies – I’ve been doing some reading over the past several weeks, trying to understand how the COVID-19 virus attacks the human body. Below are quotes I found most noteworthy or interesting from these articles.In essence, they indicate that biochemically the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, mainly binds to the ACE-2 receptor of cell surfaces to gain entrance. These are most prevalent in nasal and mucus cells, alveoli (oxygen-exchanging cells in the longs), and some cells lining the small intestine, which explains why the disease may start as abdominal discomfort in many patients. There are some conditions, especially high blood pressure and diabetes – or, possibly, medications for those conditions – which cause these ACE-2 receptors to be more expressed. Conversely, nicotine may cause a decline in the expression of ACE-2 receptors, acting to protect against the disease. But if smokers do get the disease and are admitted to the hospital, the cessation of nicotine ingestion may lead to a rebound in those receptors, worsening the condition.The virus also appears to bind to an iron ion in hemoglobin in red blood cells, causing blood clots and also preventing those cells from carrying oxygen to the rest of the body. This may explain the horribly low blood oxygen levels seen in many patients; and also why some otherwise asymptomatic patients suffer heart attacks or strokes. Even more alarming, like HIV the coronavirus appears to attack the immune system itself, binding to a different receptor, called CD147, on the T-cell leukocytes that are sent to attack it, disabling them and causing the immune system to be suppressed. It seems to be when the immune system is overwhelmed in this way (in about 10 days on average) that the disease suddenly takes a deadly turn. Here are the synopses:
- Science Daily: The virus gains interest to cells by means of the ACE-2 receptor on the cell surface, that typically is involved in blood glucose regulation:”These investigators used the knowledge they gleaned from multiple SARS-CoV strains — isolated from different hosts in different years — and angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE2) receptors from different animal species to model predictions for the novel Wuhan coronavirus. [NOTE: ACE2 serves normally as a regulator for heart function.]
- BioQuick News: How SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Gets into Respiratory Tissue — And How It May Exploit One of Our Anti-Viral Defenses; Interferon Boosts ACE2, Which Is Cell Surface Receptor That COVID-19 Binds To: ” Recent research had found that SARS-CoV-2–like the closely related SARS-CoV that caused the SARS pandemic–uses a receptor called ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2) to gain entry into human cells, aided by an enzyme called TMPRSS2 (transmembrane serine protease 2). That led Dr. Ordovas-Montanes and Dr. Shalek and colleagues to ask a simple question: which cells in respiratory and intestinal tissue express both ACE2 and TMPRSS2? ” …. They found that only a tiny percentage of human respiratory and intestinal cells, often well below 10 percent, make both ACE2 and TMPRSS2. Those cells fall in three types: goblet cells in the nose that secrete mucus; lung cells known as type II pneumocytes that help maintain the alveoli (the sacs where oxygen is taken in); and one type of so-called enterocytes that line the small intestine and are involved in nutrient absorption.
- Nature: Infection proceeds through as many as three phases: (1) an asymptomatic phase; if the body does not fight off the virus quickly enough, it proceeds to (2) a mildly symptomatic phase. If after about 10 days or so the body has still not fought off the virus, it proceeds to the devastating phase, including the oxygen transfer cells in the lungs, and also involving the blood cells themselves:
- Science Magazine: also addresses the stages by which the disease progresses: ” As the virus multiplies, an infected person may shed copious amounts of it, especially during the first week or so. Symptoms may be absent at this point. Or the virus’ new victim may develop a fever, dry cough, sore throat, loss of smell and taste, or head and body aches.”If the immune system doesn’t beat back SARS-CoV-2 during this initial phase, the virus then marches down the windpipe to attack the lungs, where it can turn deadly. The thinner, distant branches of the lung’s respiratory tree end in tiny air sacs called alveoli, each lined by a single layer of cells that are also rich in ACE2 receptors.
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Editorial: Nicotine and SARS-CoV-2: COVID-19 may be a disease of the nicotinic cholinergic system – Smoking is known to increase the risk for respiratory infection susceptibility and severity [30,31]. Considering that COVID-19 was declared by the World Health Organization as a pandemic, a substantial disease burden would be expected among the estimated 1.1 billion smokers, especially in countries with high smoking prevalence. Therefore, there were understandable concerns about this population subgroup [32]. Additionally, smoking-related disease conditions such as cardiovascular disease and COPD are also established risk factors for adverse outcomes in COVID-19 [33]. China was the first country to be affected by the pandemic and has a high smoking prevalence. In 2018, the population smoking prevalence was 26.6 % with a much higher prevalence in men (50.5 %) than in women (2.1 %) [34]. Therefore, a high smoking prevalence among patients with COVID-19 would be expected, even if smoking did not adversely affect disease susceptibility and severity. On 23 March, a preliminary analysis by some members of our group examined data from 5 case series of hospitalized COVID-19 patients from China, and calculated a smoking prevalence of 10.2 % (95 % CI: 8.7 – 11.8 %) while the estimated expected prevalence was 31.3 % (95 % CI: 8.7 – 11.8 %) [35]. The analysis was further expanded on 3 April by examining 13 Chinese studies and 5960 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, with a pooled smoking prevalence of 6.5 % (95 % CI: 4.9 – 8.2 %) [36]. On that date, we presented for the first time a hypothesis about the potential beneficial effects of nicotine, which was subsequently expanded [37]. While there were limitations in the study analysis, mainly due to the inability to adjust for confounding factors, the findings of low smoking prevalence among hospitalized COVID-19 patients in China were consistent across all studies and in agreement with case series from USA [38,39]. The original hypothesis was based on the anti-inflammatory properties of nicotine through the cholinergic anti-inflammatory system, acknowledging that the disease appeared to involve a dysregulation of the immune response to viral invasion.Nicotine is a cholinergic agonist. Therefore, it is an important inhibitor of pro-inflammatory cytokines acting through the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway via 7-nAChRs. Nicotine inhibits TNF, IL-1, IL-6 and HMGB1 while it does not inhibit anti-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-10 (Li et al., 2011; [28]). in vivo animal models found nicotine to be protective against lipopolysaccharide-induced ARDS by reducing leukocyte infiltration and pro-inflammatory mediators in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (Ni et al., 2011; Mabley et al., 2011). Such effects are relevant to COVID-19 since cytokine storm appears to be the hallmark in severe cases [40,41].
‘How is this possible?’ Researchers grapple with Covid-19’s mysterious mechanism Respiratory physician Dr David Darley says something peculiar happens to a small group of Covid-19 patients on day seven of their symptoms. “Up until the end of that first week, they’re stable,” says Darley, a doctor with Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital. “And then suddenly, they have this hyper-inflammatory response. The proteins involved in that inflammation start circulating in the body at high levels.” In these patients, the lungs begin to struggle. Blood pressure lowers. Other organs, including the kidneys, may begin to shut down. Blood clots form throughout the body. The brain and intestines may also be affected. Some suffer changes to their personality, suggesting brain damage. “I think what is evolving is a very specific set of stages of disease and for some reason, not everyone goes through all of the stages,” Darley says. “Some go through to the most severe stage and they require breathing support and oxygen. These patients who are severe tend to be older, they are more likely to be men, and also have other medical problems like diabetes, high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease.” But there is no way of knowing which patients will be affected by the most severe symptoms. Clinicians like Darley hope that a disease biomarker – a unique characteristic in the blood, body fluids, or tissues – will eventually be discovered for each stage. “It would help clinicians predict what stage patients are at and maybe even if they will progress to the next stage of disease,” he said. “It could help us predict who needs to be more closely observed in hospitals and would mean we have all the systems ready to go if they worsen. And it would give us more confidence to have them discharged to home if a biomarker says they are low risk for developing severe illness.”
Link identified between dietary selenium and outcome of Covid-19 disease –An international team of researchers, led by Professor Margaret Rayman at the University of Surrey, has identified a link between the Covid-19 cure rate and regional selenium status in China. Publishing their findings in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers using data (up to 18 February), investigated possible links between selenium levels in the body and cure or death rates of those with the Covid-19 virus in China.Selenium is an essential trace element obtained from the diet (i.e. fish, meat and cereals) which has been found to affect the severity of a number of viral diseases in animals and humans. For example selenium status in those with HIV has been shown to be an important factor in the progression of the virus to AIDs and death from the condition. China is known to have populations that have both the lowest and highest selenium status in the world, due to geographical differences in the soil which affects how much of the trace element gets into the food chain. Margaret Rayman, Professor of Nutritional Medicine at the University of Surrey, said; “Given the history of viral infections associated with selenium deficiency, we wondered whether the appearance of Covid-19 in China could possibly be linked to the belt of selenium deficiency that runs from the north-east to the south-west of the country.”Examining data from provinces and municipalities with more than 200 cases and cities with more than 40 cases, researchers found that areas with high levels of selenium were more likely to recover from the virus. For example, in the city of Enshi in Hubei Province, which has the highest selenium intake in China, the cure rate (percentage of Covid-19 patients declared ‘cured’) was almost three-times higher than the average for all the other cities in Hubei Province. By contrast, in Heilongjiang Province, where selenium intake is among the lowest in the world, the death rate from Covid-19 was almost five-times as high as the average of all the other provinces outside of Hubei. Most convincingly, the researchers found that the Covid-19 cure rate was significantly associated with selenium status, as measured by the amount of selenium in hair, in 17 cities outside of Hubei.
What if immunity to covid-19 doesn’t last? – MIT Technology Review – Starting in the fall of 2016 and continuing into 2018, researchers at Columbia University in Manhattan began collecting nasal swabs from 191 children, teachers, and emergency workers, asking them to record when they sneezed or had sore throats. The point was to create a map of common respiratory viruses and their symptoms, and how long people who recovered stayed immune to each one. The research included four coronaviruses, HKU1, NL63, OC42, and C229E, which circulate widely every year but don’t get much attention because they only cause common colds. But now that a new coronavirus in the same broad family, SARS-CoV-2, has the world on lockdown, information about the mild viruses is among our clues to how the pandemic might unfold. What the Columbia researchers now describe in a preliminary report is cause for concern. They found that people frequently got reinfected with the same coronavirus, even in the same year, and sometimes more than once. Over a year and a half, a dozen of the volunteers tested positive two or three times for the same virus, in one case with just four weeks between positive results. That’s a stark difference from the pattern with infections like measles or chicken pox, where people who recover can expect to be immune for life. For the coronaviruses “immunity seems to wane quickly,” says Jeffrey Shaman, who carried out the research with Marta Galanti, a postdoctoral researcher. Jeffrey Shaman, Columbia University Jeffrey Shaman leads the Virome of Manhattan study at Columbia University, which found people are frequently re-infected by the same cold-causing germs. The research shows immunity to some coronaviruses is short lived. MS TECH | AP PHOTO/MARY ALTAFFER Whether covid-19 will follow the same pattern is unknown, but the Columbia results suggest one way that much of the public discussion about the pandemic could be misleading. There is talk of getting “past the peak” and “immunity passports” for those who’ve recovered. At the same time, some hope the infection is more widespread than generally known, and that only a tolerable death total stands between us and high enough levels of population immunity for the virus to stop spreading. All that presumes immunity is long-lived, but what if it is fleeting instead?
April 26 Update: US COVID-19 Test Results: Fauci Expects Testing to Double – From The Hill: Fauci confident US will double coronavirus testing capacity over next several weeks Fauci said in a webcast hosted by the National Academy of Sciences that that the U.S. is currently averaging between 1.5 million and 2 million tests per week.
“We probably should get up to twice that as we get into the next several weeks, and I think we will,” Fauci said. “Testing is an important part of what we’re doing, but it is not the only part.” … “You need enough tests so when you’re doing what we’re trying to do right now, which is trying to ease our way back, that you can very easily identify, test, contact trace and get those who are infected out of society so they don’t infect others,” he said, adding that positive test results should account for less than 10 percent of tests administered. Based on these comments, the US might be able to test 400,000 to 600,000 people per day in several weeks – and that would probably be sufficient for test and trace. There were 256,444 test results reported over the last 24 hours. This data is from the COVID Tracking Project. The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 10.7% (red line). The US probably needs enough tests to push the percentage positive below 5%, although Dr. Fauci said below 10% (probably much lower based on testing in New Zealand).
Tom Hanks’ Blood Will be Used To Develop COVID-19 Vaccine — Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson’s blood will be used by medical researchers who are developing a vaccine for coronavirus after they won their battle with the illness. The married couple were among the first high-profile individuals to contract COVID-19 and they fell ill while in Australia where Tom Hanks was making his new movie, Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming Elvis Presley biopic.After going public with their diagnosis and keeping fans updated on their condition whilst in isolation Down Under, they made a full recovery and were allowed to return to their home in Los Angeles. Upon arriving back in the US, Hanks, 63, and Wilson, 63, enrolled in a medical study to determine if their antibodies would be useful for scientists working on developing a vaccine and now the Saving Private Ryan star has revealed that they have been approved to donate blood because they do “carry the antibodies”. “We have not only been approached; we have said, do you want our blood? Can we give plasma? And, in fact, we will be giving it now to the places that hope to work on what I would like to call the Hank-ccine.” Hanks previously revealed that his producer-and-actress wife suffered much worse coronavirus symptoms than he did and he was concerned for her health. He said: “Rita went through a tougher time than I did. She had a much-higher fever and she had some other symptoms. She lost her sense of taste and smell. She got absolutely no joy from food for a better part of three weeks. She was so nauseous, she had to crawl on the floor from the bed to the facilities. It lasted a while.”
It will probably take longer than 12 to 18 months to get a vaccine. – I know better than to think that life will return to normal once my state’s shelter-in-place order is lifted. I have been trying, instead, to think about “when life will return to normal” as being connected to a different milestone – the creation of a vaccine, which will stop us from getting sick in the first place. Maybe you have been thinking about this too. If you have, the timeline you are probably working with is “12 to 18 months,” maybe edging into two years. “We are talking at least a year,” Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program, said in March. “It will take at least a year to a year in a half to have a vaccine we can use,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said, also in March. “The reality is, it will take over a year in my expectation to really find a new vaccine,” a pharma CEO told the press back in January. That timeline feels … long. And, though we might be able to get back to some kind of normalcy with the help of testing and therapies, it’s actually on the shorter side of when we will get a vaccine. “Everybody would love to say yes, we can achieve an 18-month vaccine turnaround – but it’s a goal,” says Maria Elena Bottazzi, a virologist at Baylor who is working on a couple possible vaccines against COVID-19. “If you look historically, we’ve never been able to develop a vaccine with that timeline.” Ebola’s vaccine, for example, tookfive years to develop, following the 2014 outbreak; a more typical timeline is 10 years. “We’re trying to break a record here – maybe it’s not going to be four or five [years], maybe it’s three, maybe it’s two, maybe indeed it’s 18 months,” Bottazzi says.
Coronavirus updates: WHO warns of other vaccine shortages, poll finds outsized impact in NJ – The World Health Organization warned that children across the world will dieas the coronavirus pandemic forces some countries to temporarily halt vaccinations for other deadly diseases like polio. At least 21 countries are reporting vaccine shortages as a result of travel restrictions meant to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference at the agency’s Geneva headquarters. “The tragic reality is children will die as a result.” Just as immunization has been postponed in some countries, heath-care services for other diseases, like malaria, have been disrupted, Tedros said, noting that the number of malaria cases in Sub-Saharan Africa could double. New Jersey residents have felt the effects of the coronavirus more acutely than the rest of the country, a new poll found. About 7 in 10 respondents in the state, or 71%, said the pandemic has had a “major impact” on their lives, according to the Monmouth University poll. Nationally, 62% of people said the same, a previous Monmouth survey found. In the Garden State, 61% of adults said they know someone infected by the virus, compared with only 26% nationally. At the same time, 29% of people of color in New Jersey said they or a family member got the coronavirus, versus 20% of white people. New Jersey has more than 100,000 Covid-19 cases, second among states only to its neighbor New York. The Monmouth University poll, taken from April 16 to 19, surveyed 704 New Jersey adults with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.Health experts and asset markets are watching closely as segments of the U.S. reopen their economies. Across the Atlantic, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is back at work after recovering from the virus, delivering a sober address about the nation’s progress in fighting the Covid-19 outbreak. This is CNBC’s live blog covering all the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak. All times below are in Eastern time. This blog will be updated throughout the day as the news breaks.
- Global cases: More than 3 million
- Global deaths: At least 208,131
- US cases: More than 972,900
- US deaths: At least 55,118
WHO says US faces ‘difficult situation’ as the coronavirus epidemic differ by state – The U.S. faces a “very difficult situation” in grappling with an epidemic that varies by state and is evolving at different rates across the vast country, a top World Health Organization official said Monday.”I think that the United States has been dealing for a while with a complex situation,” added Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s emergencies program. “It’s a very large country, 50 states, each one with different populations, with different levels of urbanization and the epidemic at different levels of development and evolution in each of those.”Ryan commended the U.S. for rolling out data-driven federal guidelines such as President Donald Trump’s “Opening Up America Again” plan, which lays out three “phases” to guide states on how and when to reopen, based on factors such as new daily infections and hospital capacity. “The federal government and the system of governors are working together to move America and its people through this very difficult situation with public health and other scientific leaders adding and inputting their advice into the system,” Ryan said. “We believe that the overarching federal plan seems to be very much based on science.”Last week, Trump asked at a nationally televised White House press briefing whether injecting disinfectants into the body could be a Covid-19 treatment worthy of research. His comments drew the ire of toxicologists and public health specialists who called the comments reckless.And earlier this month, Trump announced the U.S. will suspend funding to the WHO while it reviews the agency’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, adding that the international health agency made mistakes that “caused so much death.” Ryan’s remarks come as states across the U.S. announce plans to reopen parts of the economy, some as soon as this week. Last week, Vice President Mike Pence said 16 states had unveiled “formal reopening plans.” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp began to reopen parts of the economy on Friday, starting with retail locations such as gyms, barber shops, fitness centers and bowling alleys. President Donald Trump said last week that he “totally disagrees” with the decision to reopen those businesses first.
Collecting and reporting ethnicity stats on COVID-19 matters for the health of everyone -The Equitable Data Collection and Disclosure on COVID-19 Act, which requires the federal government to include race and ethnicity among demographic data collected and released about COVID-19 is not partisan. It is not biased. And it is not relevant only to the slice of American citizenry with brown and black skin who are dying disproportionately in this country from the virus. It matters to the health and welfare of everyone. Importantly – as we look to Michigan, where 14 percent of the population is black yet 33 percent of those with COVID-19 are black; to Louisiana, where 32 percent of the population is black yet 70 of the dead are black; to the city of Boston, where 25 percent of the population is black yet 40 percent of those infected are black – we see a horrifying but compelling pattern that, if investigated, could help us eventually stop the spread of the virus. Here’s why: While COVID-19 does not see color, it does see – and viciously attacks – people with underlying health conditions: lung, heart, and kidney disease, as well as cancer, diabetes and other chronic illnesses. Minority and underserved communities suffer and die in far higher numbers from these diseases. They always have. While the COVID-19 data on minorities are alarming, they are not shocking. But what we already know offers us a way forward. Unlike with other segments of the population, we can more easily predict the likelihood of COVID-19 hotspots in these communities – and more effectively deploy rapid testing and contact tracing in order to quickly gain data-driven insights that can turn the tide in these neighborhoods and be applied to neighborhoods nationwide. In other words, a mandate to post daily updates on the CDC website showing the data disaggregated by race, ethnicity, sex, age, socioeconomic status, disability status, county, and other demographic information is not meant to divide us for the benefit of a few. It is meant to inform us for the benefit of all.
Coronavirus Is Likely to Generate Telltale Signs, Fauci Says – Most people who’ve had the coronavirus probably develop markers of the infection, according to Anthony Fauci, the scientist who’s leading the U.S. response to the pandemic.Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it would be “extremely unusual” if patients did not develop antibodies, which often bestow immunity on people who’ve been infected with a virus. Other experts have cast doubt on whether this happens in everyone with the new coronavirus, fueling concerns about the insidious nature of the illness.”I’d be careful about saying people who get infected don’t have any antibodies,” Fauci said in an interview. “It would be almost unprecedented.”The dependable appearance of antibodies following Covid-19 infections would be highly reassuring as governments move to restart economies from lockdowns. Tests for them can show who’s been infected by the pathogen and how far it’s spread — and, potentially, how many people have developed immunity that could allow them to work in virus-exposed jobs with less risk of illness.Scientists from China said in April that they couldn’t find signs of protective antibodies in about 6% of the 175 recovered patients they tested. Officials at the World Health Organization have said the nature of any immune response remains unclear. The same study that found patients with no antibodies found others with significant responses. “Right now the information is mixed,” Maria Van Kerkhove, Covid-19 technical lead at the WHO, said at a press briefing in April. “We need much more information from recovered patients.”
Consumer Beware: Coronavirus Antibody Tests Are Still A Work In Progress – After hearing for months about serious access issues involving tests that diagnose COVID-19 based on swabs from the nose or throat, Americans are being inundated with reports about promising new tests that look for signs of infection in the blood. There are high hopes for these antibody tests, which detect proteins that form in blood as part of the body’s immune response to an invading virus. Communities across the U.S. have been rolling out the results of serological surveys that examine blood samples from people who haven’t been diagnosed with COVID-19 to see if they were, in fact, previously infected. The thinking is, if there are blood markers that can detect when people have been infected, such tests should be able to tell us how widely the novel coronavirus has spread. And equally optimistic: those same antibodies could convey immunity to the disease, signaling someone is safe from reinfection and able to get back to work. Such high hopes, however, are running smack into the roadblocks of reality. Infectious disease experts are raising pointed questions about the reliability of the early tests and the studies that hinge on their results. And they warn that state and local governments – as well as individuals – should be wary of shaping policy or changing behavior based on any single report. In the sharpest caution to date, officials with the World Health Organization on Saturday warned against plans for proposed “immunity passports,” which would allow people who have recovered from the coronavirus to resume unrestricted travel and work. “There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection,” the agency wrote in a scientific brief. Even before the WHO weighed in, other experts were urging restraint in interpreting early results of antibody screening. In the past few weeks, more than 180 academic centers, hospitals and private manufacturers have notified the federal Food and Drug Administration that they intend to create serology tests for COVID-19, spokesperson Stephanie Caccomo said in an email. They’ve been able to jump into the fray because the FDA in March relaxed regulations for developing tests as part of its emergency response to the pandemic. But the FDA has not reviewed the vast majority of tests on the market, and their validity, particularly point-of-care blood tests that promise rapid results within minutes, isn’t clear, said Dr. Michael Busch, director of the Vitalant Research Institute and a professor of laboratory medicine at the University of California-San Francisco. “Some of them have sensitivities that are quite poor,” he said. “You may even miss some infected people completely.” Other tests may flag people as positive for COVID-19 when they’re not infected. That’s especially true in regions of the country with little spread of the novel virus. If the prevalence of a disease is low, less than 5%, even an accurate test would yield a high number of false positive results because of the way such screening tools operate.
Heartburn drug trial shows ‘reasonable confidence’ it could help treat coronavirus, hospital CEO – Northwell Health CEO Michael Dowling said that scientists working on a drug trial for famotidine, a common heartburn medication, have “a reasonable confidence” that the drug may make a difference in the treatment of Covid-19 patients. “It’s one of many trials we’re doing, but we believe in the next two weeks or so we’ll have some potential results to be able to tell whether it’s working or not,” Dowling told CNBC on Tuesday. He said it’s too early to say definitively whether or not it works, but “our scientists have a reasonable confidence in this trial that it may make a difference.” Dowling said there are approximately 200 patients currently enrolled in the trial, which uses nine times the amount of famotidine intravenously that someone would usually take to treat heartburn, as first reported by Science Magazine. Famotidine is a common ingredient found in Pepcid, a heartburn medication. The study, which is underway at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, the research arm of New York-based health system Northwell Health, was kept under wraps to ensure enough supply for the trial. Health officials are concerned that there could be a rush on the medication in stores, preventing people with heartburn or stomach ulcers to access the drug. “It’s very difficult to get at the moment, I believe Amazon is sold out,” Dowling said. “Because once the word gets out that this is something that could help, obviously there was a run on the supply, but we do have enough to do the trial and do it successfully.” The trial is is one of six to seven underway at the hospital, Dowling said. Northwell is also studying whether Regeneron’s sarilumab, a drug for arthritis, and Gilead Sciences’s remdesivir could also help treat coronavirus patients. There are currently no proven therapeutics or vaccines for Covid-19.
U.S. emergency approval broadens use of Gilead’s COVID-19 drug remdesivir – (Reuters) – Gilead Science Inc’s antiviral drug remdesivir was granted emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for COVID-19 on Friday, clearing the way for broader use of the drug in more hospitals around the United States. During a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House with President Donald Trump, Gilead Chief Executive Daniel O’Day called the move an important first step and said the company was donating 1.5 million vials of the drug to help patients. The donation is expected to be enough for at least 140,000 patients, depending on the number of days they need to be treated. Gilead said on Wednesday the drug, which is given by intravenous infusion, had helped improve outcomes for patients with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and provided data suggesting it worked better when given earlier in the course of infection. With many countries reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, interest in Gilead’s drug has been high because there are currently no approved treatments or preventive vaccines for COVID-19. Doctors are desperate for anything that might alter the course of the disease that attacks the lungs and can shut down other organs in extremely severe cases.
Twitter Suspends Account Of Biotech Company Testing UV Light To Treat Coronavirus -Twitter has suspended the account of a Colorado biotech company which is working with Cedars-Sinai to test and develop a potential coronavirus treatment using UV light inserted into the lungs – the same week as Homeland Security’s head of Science and Technology, Bill Bryan, suggested that UV light could have a significant affect on viruses such as COVID-19.UPDATE: @Twitter just suspended the account of the publicly traded biotech company AYTU BioScience that created a novel COVID-19 treatment approach utilizing UV light in the lungs that @realDonaldTrump was talking about. This is ridiculous! https://t.co/4zwadZr9Yn pic.twitter.com/df9Qkbfmuk – Mike Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) April 26, 2020 The suspension of Aytu BioScience’s account comes shortly after YouTube removed a video demonstrating the technology (which can be seen below on Vimeo).
Televangelist Pat Robertson Blames COVID-19 On Abortions And Same Sex Marriage –The controversial televangelist Pat Robertson recently told his viewers that same-sex marriage was to blame for the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. During an episode of his show “The 700 Club,” Robertson repeatedly suggested that coronavirus pandemic is a punishment from God. Robertson said that humanity is being punished for our “wicked ways” and said that the virus will not go away until people repent and change the ways that they are living. Abortion and same-sex marriage appeared to be among the top concerns of the televangelist and his viewers.Things got interesting when a viewer called into the show and asked if people in same-sex marriages, those who get abortions and those who have a problem with Israel are preventing God from healing the world.”How can God heal our land and forgive the sins when abortion and same-sex marriage are laws and many people are anti-Israel. Doesn’t this prevent his healing and forgiveness?” the caller asked.Robertson agreed with the caller, and used her comments to launch into a tirade about how God will not heal people because they have done “terrible things” and have broken a “covenant with God.””You know, I think you put your finger on something very important. We are not turning when we have done terrible things. We have broken the covenant that God made with mankind. We have violated his covenant. We have taken the life of the innocent, slaughtered them by the tens of millions. Children made in the image of God … I mean, we’ve allowed this terrible plague to spread throughout our society,” he said. Robertson’s comments sparked outrage among liberal activists and advocates for the communities mentioned in his broadcast. However, Robertson is no stranger to controversy, in fact, he has built much of his business on it, and these types of comments are fairly common on his show.
A disturbing new study suggests Sean Hannity’s show helped spread the coronavirus — Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, media critics have warned that the decision from leading Fox News hosts to downplay the outbreak could cost lives. A new study provides statistical evidence that, in the case of Sean Hannity, that’s exactly what happened.The paper – from economists Leonardo Bursztyn, Aakaash Rao, Christopher Roth, and David Yanagizawa-Drott – focused on Fox news programming in February and early March.At the time, Hannity’s show was downplaying or ignoring the virus, while fellow Fox host Tucker Carlson was warning viewers about the disease’s risks.Using both a poll of Fox News viewers over age 55 and publicly available data on television-watching patterns, they calculate that Fox viewers who watched Hannity rather than Carlson were less likely to adhere to social distancing rules, and that areas where more people watched Hannity relative to Carlson had higher local rates of infection and death. “Greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight leads to a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths,” they write. “A one-standard deviation increase in relative viewership of Hannity relative to Carlson is associated with approximately 30 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14, and 21 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28.” “This really looks like a causal effect of misinformation [leading] to deaths.” The paper is technically quite complex, but it (more or less) breaks down into three parts. First, the authors provide evidence that there was a difference in how Hannity and Carlson covered the coronavirus outbreak in February and early March. Second, they present data from their poll showing that Hannity viewers were less likely to follow social distancing rules than Carlson viewers. Third, they used data on television viewership and the coronavirus to show that higher rates of Hannity viewership relative to Carlson viewership were correlated with higher rates of local infection and death. It seems pretty clear, from the first section, that Carlson took this way more seriously than Hannity. On February 25, Carlson warned that the virus could kill as many as a million Americans. On February 27, Hannity said it was less dangerous than car crashes or the common flu.
A spike in New Yorkers ingesting household cleaners following Trump’s controversial coronavirus comments – An unusually high number of New Yorkers contacted city health authorities over fears that they had ingested bleach or other household cleaners in the 18 hours that followed President Trump’s bogus claim that injecting such products could cure coronavirus, the Daily News has learned. The Poison Control Center, a subagency of the city’s Health Department, managed a total of 30 cases of possible exposure to disinfectants between 9 p.m. Thursday and 3 p.m. Friday, a spokesman said. None of the people who reached out died or required hospitalization, the spokesman said. But compared to last year, the number of cases was worthy of a double-take. According to data obtained by The News, the Poison Control Center only handled 13 similar cases in the same 18-hour period last year. Moreover, out of the cases reported between Thursday and Friday, nine were specifically about possible exposure to Lysol. Ten were in regard to bleach and 11 about household cleaners in general, the spokesman said.
Two men in Georgia drank disinfectants in efforts to prevent COVID-19, officials say – Officials say two men in Georgia who have suffered from psychiatric problems ingested household chemicals in an effort to protect themselves against COVID-19, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Gaylord Lopez, director of the Georgia Poison Center, told the newspaper that a man was hospitalized on Saturday after he claimed to have ingested 16 ounces of bleach in a bid “to prevent COVID.” “He said that he took 16 ounces,” Lopez said. “I don’t know very many patients who will take 16 ounces, but then again, it is a psych history patient.” Lopez said the man was later transported to a psychiatric ward and has since been released. The director said another man had also been hospitalized after drinking Pine-sol mixed with mouthwash, beer and pain medication. It’s unclear, Lopez said, whether the two men had tried ingesting the cleaners after listening to remarks President Trump made about disinfectants at a press conference last week. “We don’t ask the question of, was it because they watched a TV show?” he told the paper. “We are just told, ‘What do we do for these patients?’ And it’s our job to try to give them treatment advice to make sure these patients make it.” During a press briefing last week, Trump discussed the possibility of injecting disinfectants as a potential coronavirus treatment.
Revealed: leader of group peddling bleach as coronavirus ‘cure’ wrote to Trump last week – The leader of the most prominent group in the US peddling potentially lethal industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for coronavirus wrote to Donald Trump at the White House last week. In his letter, Mark Grenon told Trump that chlorine dioxide – a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk – is “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body”. He added that it “can rid the body of Covid-19”.A few days after Grenon dispatched his letter, Trump went on national TV at his daily coronavirus briefing at the White House on Thursday and promoted the idea that disinfectant could be used as a treatment for the virus. To theastonishment of medical experts, the US president said that disinfectant “knocks it out in a minute. One minute!”He went on to say: “Is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that.”Trump did not specify where the idea of using disinfectant as a possible remedy for Covid-19 came from, and the source for his notion remains obscure. But the Guardian has learned that peddlers of chlorine dioxide – industrial bleach – have been making direct approaches to the White House in recent days.Grenon styles himself as “archbishop” of Genesis II – a Florida-based outfit that claims to be a church but which in fact is the largest producer and distributor of chlorine dioxide bleach as a “miracle cure” in the US. He brands the chemical asMMS, “miracle mineral solution”, and claims fraudulently that it can cure 99% of all illnesses including cancer, malaria, HIV/Aids as well as autism.Since the start of the pandemic, Genesis II has been marketing MMS as a cure to coronavirus. It advises users, including children, to mix t hree to six drops of bleach in water and drink it.
North Carolina Pug Tests Positive for Coronavirus, Could Be First Infected Dog in U.S. – A family pug in North Carolina may be the first dog in the U.S. to test positive for the novel coronavirus, according to Duke University researchers, as CNN reported.The dog belongs to the McLean family in Chapel Hill, NC, who participated in the Duke University study looking at possible treatments for COVID-19. The virus also infected three of the family members: Dr. Heather McLean, Dr. Samuel McLean and their son Ben McLean. Their daughter, Sydney McLean, never showed signs of infection. The family members submit nasal swabs and blood samples weekly.The researchers also collect samples from the family pets. Of the family pets tested, Winston, who is 2, was the only one to test positive. Both Otis, 13, the older of the McLeans’s two pugs, and Mr. Nibs, a 12-year-old tabby cat, tested negative. The family’s lizard was not tested, according to The New York Times.”To our knowledge, this is the first instance in which the virus has been detected in a dog,” said Dr. Chris Woods, the principal investigator on Duke’s Molecular and Epidemiological Study of Suspected Infection study, in a statement, as TIME reported. “Little additional information is known at this time as we work to learn more about the exposure.”The family said the dog’s symptoms lasted only a few days and were mild. The dog was sluggish, sneezing and breathing heavily. Most telling of all, they said, he didn’t finish breakfast one morning, as The New York Times reported.
CDC Extends Social Distancing Guidelines To Apply To Pets – Now that the first domesticated dog has tested positive for for the novel coronavirus, joining at least one tiger at the Bronx Zoo, it’s probably worth noting that the CDC earlier this month extended America’s social distancing guidelines to include pets. To be clear: there’s no evidence of pets infecting humans, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. So far, tests suggested that the viral strains found in animals weren’t concentrated enough to cause infection in humans, but nobody can say for certain.We’re still learning about how #COVID19 affects animals, but it appears that people can spread the virus to animals in some situations. Until we know more, limit contact with pets if you are sick or feeling sick. For more info, see: https://t.co/H8NS2GTd4x. pic.twitter.com/uGEbo1su2O – CDC (@CDCgov) April 23, 2020 Instead of allowing your dog to run around the neighborhood without a leash, sniffing the anus of every fellow canine, the new guidelines advise Americans to “treat pets as you would other human family members.””Do not let pets interact with animals or people outside the household,” the CDC said.Dog owners should avoid taking their fur-babies to dog parks, or any places where they might risk infection.More importantly, the guidelines recommend that “if a person inside the household becomes sick, isolate that person from everyone else, including pets.”While the CDC acknowledged that much research still needs to be done, there’s enough evidence now to suggest that pets can be infected by humans.
We Still Don’t Know How the Coronavirus Is Killing Us – Over the last few weeks, the country has managed to stabilize the spread of the coronavirus sufficiently enough to begin debating when and in what ways to “reopen,” and to normalize, against all moral logic, the horrifying and ongoing death toll – thousands of Americans dying each day, in multiples of 9/11 every week now with the virus seemingly “under control.” The death rate is no longer accelerating, but holding steady, which is apparently the point at which an onrushing terror can begin fading into background noise. Meanwhile, the disease itself appears to be shape-shifting before our eyes. In an acute column published April 13, the New York Times‘ Charlie Warzel listed 48 basic questions that remain unanswered about the coronavirus and what must be done to protect ourselves against it, from how deadly it is to how many people caught it and shrugged it off to how long immunity to the disease lasts after infection (if any time at all). “Despite the relentless, heroic work of doctors and scientists around the world,” he wrote, “there’s so much we don’t know.” The 48 questions he listed, he was careful to point out, did not represent a comprehensive list. And those are just the coronavirus’s “known unknowns.” But there is one big question that didn’t even make it onto Warzel’s list that has only gotten more mysterious in the weeks since: How is COVID-19 actually killing us? We are now almost six months into this pandemic, which began in November in Wuhan, with 50,000 Americans dead and 200,000 more around the world. If each of those deaths is a data point, together they represent a quite large body of evidence from which to form a clear picture of the pandemic threat. The clinical shape of the disease, long presumed to be a relatively predictable respiratory infection, is getting less clear by the week. Lately, it seems, by the day. As Carl Zimmer, probably the country’s most respected science journalist, asked virologists in a tweet last week, “is there any other virus out there that is this weird in terms of its range of symptoms?” You probably have a sense of the range of common symptoms, and a sense that the range isn’t that weird: fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath have been, since the beginning of the outbreak, the familiar, oft-repeated group of tell-tale signs. But while the CDC does list fever as the top symptom of COVID-19, so confidently that for weeks patients were turned away from testing sites if they didn’t have an elevated temperature,according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, as many as 70 percent of patients sick enough to be admitted to New York State’s largest hospital system did not have a fever. “[T]he degree to which doctors and scientists are, still, feeling their way, as though blindfolded, toward a true picture of the disease cautions against any sense that things have stabilized, given that our knowledge of the disease hasn’t even stabilized.”
He ran marathons and was fit. So why did Covid-19 almost kill him? – STAT – A week after testing positive for Covid-19, Joshua Fiske drove himself to a New Jersey hospital with a fever nearing 104 and a blood oxygen level extraordinarily low for an athletic 47-year-old. An X-ray revealed pneumonia in both lungs. He was admitted but his condition worsened: He felt cold enough to shiver under five blankets in one moment, then sweated through his hospital gown the next. He worried he wouldn’t pull through. He called his wife to say he loved her. He called his two sons and asked them to take care of their mother, then tapped out a letter to them on his phone. He wanted them to grow into good, kind men, he told them. Above all, he urged, “Don’t let this event define you.” Among the many mysteries of Covid-19 is why relatively healthy young people suddenly become critically ill – or die. One answer is what was happening to Fiske. His body had begun to fight the coronavirus with the immune system’s equivalent of thermonuclear weapons – proteins so powerful they risk annihilating the body they are supposed to protect. This massive over-reaction, known as a cytokine storm, is believed to be a major reason that a growing number of exceedingly fit people find themselves fighting for their lives.Immune cells release cytokines as part of the normal response to infections, but in many Covid-19 patients, this process gets out of hand, leading to inflammation and fluid buildup in the lungs. The storms pose a dilemma for doctors: Prescribe medications that tamp down the immune system at the wrong moment, and the body will be defenseless against the coronavirus or any opportunistic infection that’s taken root. Do nothing, and there’s a good chance the massive attack will shut down the lungs and other vital organs. Scientists have begun to study how many patients who become critically ill with Covid-19 experience these storms, which were initially seen in some of the earliest patients hospitalized in Wuhan, China. In one study of 53 patients in China, researchers concluded that three particular cytokines were correlated with disease severity and death. (The paper was posted on a preprint server and hasn’t been peer-reviewed.) The crucial question of what portion of critically ill patients are vulnerable to cytokine storms – and why – awaits more detailed research. “We don’t know the numbers, but among previously healthy people ages 20 to 60 who require hospitalization, a significant number are suffering from cytokine storms in addition to the virus,” Cron told STAT.
Confirmed coronavirus cases in the US surpass one million – The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States rocketed past one million over the weekend, with more than 100,000 cases detected in the past three days. The most new cases were recorded in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, California, Maryland and Texas. The tally of the dead also grew to new heights of 56,000. Deaths from COVID-19 in the US are continuing to rise by an average of 2,000 each day. The United States currently has one third of the world COVID-19 caseload, which stands at three million. While Europe as a whole still has more cases, the US is currently on track to overtake the continent within the next two weeks. Worldwide, the death toll is approaching 210,000. Amid the ongoing spread of the worst global pandemic in a century, Georgia, Florida, Ohio and Texas are among nearly 20 states that are either launching or preparing to implement over the next week “Phase 1” reopening plans. They are doing so based on the claim that the number of observed new cases has been declining for at least 14 days, and that reopening is thus safe. Collectively, the states that are opening are home to about half of the American population. Whatever the claims of the various governors, there is no medical or scientific basis for lifting social distancing and isolation measures. Even a single new case indicates community transmission in a region, which can easily spiral into a spate of new cases as people again begin to mingle in large groups. New cases inevitably mean new deaths, as more people are exposed to the deadly contagion. The widely cited University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) study, which in early April claimed that only 60,000 lives would be lost, and has been used repeatedly to justify reopening, is being blown apart by the pandemic itself. The US death toll from the pandemic will surpass the 60,000 figure in the course of the coming week. When asked on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” when he thought it would be safe to reopen, infectious disease specialist Dr. Michael Osterholm warned, “We are in the very earliest days of the situation right now.” He noted that for places like New York, which saw a large spike and now a relative decline in the number of new coronarvirus cases each day, “they have to understand that’s not the mountain. That is the foothills. They have mountains to go yet. We have a lot of people to get infected before this is over.” Osterholm was referencing two basic facts about the current pandemic. First, because hundreds of millions of people have remained at home and thus far not been infected, they are all potential carriers for the virus, and will be exposed to it as they are forced to go back to work or come into contact with people returning to crowded or enclosed areas such as restaurants and bars. Second, there is still no mass testing program in the United States that is capable of giving a clear picture of just how far the virus has spread, nor is there a contact tracing program to test those who have been in the presence of someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
U.S. coronavirus deaths: Tracking cases, deaths by state and county – Washington Post -The disease caused by the novel coronavirus has killed at least 58,000 people in the United States. The country’s earliest covid-19 fatality was thought to be a 58-year-old man near Seattle, whose death was announced Feb. 29.But on April 22, officials in California announced that tissue from two people who had died in early and mid-February in Santa Clara County had tested positive, signaling that the virus may have spread in the country weeks earlier As the death toll rose through March and April and U.S. testing lagged, criteria for reporting deaths changed in some states and cities. Even now, jurisdictions continue to fine-tune their counting and reporting procedures, so numbers in this piece may fluctuate as local authorities classify and reclassify cases.New York City, for instance, in mid-April added to its total more than 3,700 deaths of people who were presumed to have covid-19 but were never tested. Because testing was slow to begin in the United States, health officials agree that the number of reported cases is much lower than the actual number of people who have the disease, and even the count of deaths is probably low because of differences in reporting by overwhelmed local jurisdictions.Hot spots have erupted in a few places with large outbreaks, none more dire than in New York, where at least 295,000 cases have been reported and at least23,000 have died since March 14, when Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) announced the death of an 82-year-old woman. Although it is a populous state, New York also leads the country in deaths per 100,000 residents. Neighboring states are not far behind.Hard-hit Louisiana suffered an early breakout in New Orleans, which may have been fueled by the month-long Carnival celebration that drew more than a million people to the city in February and culminated in a raucous – and crowded – Mardi Gras. Washington, where the U.S. outbreak was first announced in early February, has had a high number of deaths among older people, particularly in the Seattle area. The disease took root early in several King County nursing homes and facilities that care for older, sicker people. Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit, has a high rate of infections per capita thanks in part, health officials told the Detroit Free Press, to economic disparities. People in areas of concentrated poverty tend to have higher rates of diabetes, heart disease and obesity. The virus is not just an urban issue. Sparsely populated rural areas don’t have the huge raw numbers of cases or deaths that cities are reporting, but some rank highly in deaths and cases per capita. People in very rural areas are more likely to die of flu than urbanites and may be more vulnerable to covid-19 as well, according to a Post analysis of CDC data. Ten counties with highest rate of deaths: [..] A handful of counties in southwestern Georgia have some of the highest rates of infection and deaths in the country. The governor sent Georgia National Guard troops to help with medical care in Dougherty County, which has fewer than 100,000 people but more than 1,000 cases and dozens of deaths.
Coronavirus Has Now Killed More Americans Than Vietnam War – In not even three months since the first known U.S. deaths from COVID-19, more lives have now been lost to the coronavirus pandemic on U.S. soil than the 58,220 Americans who died over nearly two decades in Vietnam. Early Tuesday evening ET, the U.S. death toll reached 58,365, according to Johns Hopkins University. While the number of lives lost in the U.S. during the pandemic and the U.S. death toll in that war are roughly the same now, the death rate from the coronavirus in America is considerably higher. It now stands at about 17.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. During 1968, the deadliest year for the U.S. in Vietnam, the death toll of 16,899 occurred at about half the pandemic’s rate – 8.5 troops were killed for every 100,000 U.S. residents.The pandemic has also been marked by nationwide death tolls surpassing 2,000 on six days this month. The highest daily toll for Americans fighting in the Vietnam War was on Jan. 31, 1968, when 246 U.S. personnel were killed during the Tet Offensive. A closer parallel to the total of lives lost so far to the pandemic in the U.S. may be the 2017-2018 flu season, the deadliest in the past decade. There were 61,000 influenza-related deaths nationally reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for a roughly eight-month period.
Why COVID-19 Is Hitting Men Harder Than Women – More men are dying from COVID-19 worldwide than women, and the potential reasons run the gamut from biology to bad habits.The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that 68 percent of deaths related to COVID-19 in Europe have been among men.A study by the Higher Health Institute of Rome found that among Italians hospitalized for the novel coronavirus, 8 percent of men died compared to 5 percent of women.In New York City, men have been dying of coronavirus at almost twice the rate of women. The city’s health department reports 43 COVID-19 deaths for every 100,000 men, compared with 23 deaths for every 100,000 women.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently isn’t reporting COVID-19 deaths by gender, but experts see no reason the trend would differ elsewhere in the country.”Some of the underlying reasons why COVID-19 may be more deadly for men than women may include the fact that heart disease is more common in elderly men than in elderly women,” Dr. Stephen Berger, an infectious disease expert and co-founder of the Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Network (GIDEON), told Healthline. “Studies also find that high blood pressure and liver disease are more prevalent in men and these all contribute to more negative outcomes with COVID-19.””Genetics may also play a big role,” Berger said. “Women, because of their extra X chromosome, have a stronger immune system and response to infections than men.” “You can’t get away from biology and genetics,”
Police uncover bodies in U-Haul trucks outside NYC funeral home after neighbors report foul odor – NYPD officers on Wednesday reportedly discovered dozens of bodies in unrefrigerated U-Haul trucks outside a Brooklyn funeral home. Neighbors had called police about a foul odor they believed traced back to the Andrew Cleckley Funeral Home in the Flatlands neighborhood, according to PIX11. Police sources told the outlet that at least 30 bodies had been stored in the trucks after the funeral home filled to capacity. “[F]uneral directors are required to store decedents awaiting burial or other final disposition in appropriate conditions and to follow their routine infection prevention and control precautions,” a spokesperson for the New York State Health Department told PIX11, adding that the department has been informed of the “storage issues.” Police told a local Fox affiliate that the city’s Health Department and Environmental Protection Department were also on the scene and helped move the bodies to refrigerated trucks. Borough president Eric Adams tweeted Wednesday afternoon that he was “heading out to Flatlands right now” to investigate the reports. “This is exactly what I spoke about over the weekend regarding the urgent need for reform in the handling of bodies and burial processes,” he wrote. “We demand decent treatment of our deceased.”
EXCLUSIVE: ‘It’s a horror movie.’ Nurse working on coronavirus frontline in New York claims the city is ‘murdering’ COVID-19 patients by putting them on ventilators and causing trauma to the lung – A frontline nurse working in New York on coronavirus patients claims the city is killing sufferers by putting them on ventilators. ‘It’s a horror movie,’ she said through a friend. ‘Not because of the disease, but the way it is being handled.’ And she said relatives of the sick need to make it clear as soon as a person is taken to the hospital that they do not want them hooked up to the breathing machines. The nurse, who has relocated to New York temporarily to help with the city’s COVID-19 crisis, persuaded a friend – a nurse practitioner who is not working on coronavirus patients – to make the video for her in order to tell the world what she says is happening inside hospitals. ‘I am her voice here. I’m going to tell you what she has told me,’ said the nurse practitioner, who was identified only as Sara NP. ‘She wants this to get out.’ ‘She has never seen so much neglect. No one cares. They are cold and they don’t care anymore. It’s the blind leading the blind.’ ‘People are sick, but they don’t have to stay sick. They are killing them, they are not helping them,’ added the friend in the video posted on YouTube. ‘She used the word murder, that coming from a nurse who went to New York City expecting to help. ‘Patients are left to rot and die – her words. People are being murdered and no one cares.’ Sara would not reveal which hospital the nurse is working in ‘for the safety of those involved.’ More than 12,000 people have died from the virus in New York City, with another 4,300 dying in other parts of the Empire State, which is a far larger number than any other state in the country. Republican Minnesota state Senator Scott Jensen told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that Medicare pays hospitals three times as much if patients are placed on ventilators. ‘How can anyone not believe that increasing the number of COVID-19 deaths may create an avenue for states to receive a larger portion of federal dollars,’ Jensen later posted on his Facebook page. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has said that around 80 percent of people who go on the machines die, although he’s referencing patients who were already in dire conditions before being put on the machines.
Despite over 100 transit worker deaths, New York Governor Cuomo and MTA push for unsafe return to work – In a malicious effort to convince transit workers that it is safe to work, Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on April 25 that antibody testing would begin on employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) this week. This criminal measure came only one day before the grim milestone of 100 transit worker deaths was reached. As of April 26, 101 active MTA employees have died from COVID-19. Added to this number are 34 retirees and five school bus drivers. Many more remain in serious condition in hospitals across the city. These figures are collected by a team of transit workers working independently of the MTA, which has been ignored by authorities who refuse to continually track these deaths. Well over 60 employees have died since the agency’s last official tally on April 7. In an April 28 New York Post Op-Ed, MTA Interim President Sarah Feinburg failed to acknowledge the 100-death milestone. As the MTA and Democratic Party politicians become increasingly desperate to cover up their role in these tragic deaths, they resort to foul attacks on New York City’s homeless population, whose plight has only been exacerbated by the virus. In a reference to homeless people taking refuge on subway cars, at his April 28 news conference Governor Cuomo stated that it “is disgusting what is happening on those subway cars.” Whatever measures the MTA takes, they will not be to protect transit workers, who are still highly vulnerable to the virus, as they go without adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), adequate access to testing and paid sick leave. By dehumanizing the homeless and presenting them as scapegoats for their own failings, Cuomo, Feinburg and their allies are trying to distract the public from their own criminal response to the pandemic. It is no accident that attempts to target the homeless come as Cuomo is preparing to reopen New York state, which remains the epicenter of the pandemic. Mass transit’s central role in the economic activity of New York City means it is intertwined with any effort to reopen the state. Knowing that the resumption of business is already unpopular and will lead to tens of thousands of deaths, Cuomo and his big business sponsors are seeking to convince workers who are quarantined that it will be safe to ride the subways and buses.
Florida ordered coroners to stop releasing coronavirus death data: report –Florida officials have reportedly withheld medical examiners’ data on coronavirus deaths in the state for over a week, with the policy changing shortly after the Tampa Bay Times reported that the medical examiners were counting 10 percent more deaths than the state.Stephen Nelson, the chairman of the state Medical Examiners Commission, told the Tampa Bay Times that the state health department intervened and told him it planned to remove causes of death and case descriptions from mortality data.Nelson told the newspaper the data is meaningless without that information, and the entirety of the list should be considered public information.”This is no different than any other public record we deal with,” he said. “It’s paid for by taxpayer dollars and the taxpayers have a right to know.”Alberto Moscoso, a spokesman for the state health department, told the Times that the department “participated in conference calls” with the state Department of Law Enforcement, which provides administrative support to the Medical Examiners Commission, saying the discussions pertained to “privacy concerns for the individuals that passed away related to COVID-19.”
Coronavirus: DeWine unveils reopening details: Offices on Monday; retail on May 12; dine-in restaurants, bars remain closed – Columbus Dispatch – Five weeks after issuing a stay-at-home order amid the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Mike DeWine on Monday authorized a return to work for some Ohioans but delayed reopening retail stores to May 12. The governor said he was attempting to strike a balance between reviving Ohio’s cratered economy while protecting Ohioans and insisting on “strong” virus precautions by businesses and employers. General offices, distribution centers, manufacturers and construction companies can open on Monday, DeWine announced. Retail stores and consumer and service businesses will be permitted to open on May 12, which the governor said signified his “layered-in” approach to kick-starting business while seeking to protect public health. But so-called “hands-on” services such as barber shops, hair and nail salons, tattoo parlors, massage therapists and others must remain closed. Restaurant dine-in service was not authorized for resumption, and bars also will remain closed except for carry-out. The Ohio Restaurant Association reports that 300,000 employees have lost jobs and half of the state’s restaurants have halted operations because the COVID-19 strictures. Following DeWine’s remarks, the association pleaded to permit “social distanced” dine-in service in restaurants, by removing tables and taking other steps, starting May 15. DeWine said elective medical procedures and surgeries, halted under a March 17 order to preserve beds and personal protection equipment, can proceed beginning Friday if they are medically justified and do not require overnight stays. Dental offices and veterinary clinics also are allowed to reopen Friday. The stay-at-home order running through Friday will effectively remain in place, DeWine said, with gatherings of more than 10 people still forbidden. Events that attract crowds, such as sporting events and concerts, remain forbidden. A graphic shown by the governor at his Friday briefing to Ohioans stated “No mask, no work, no service, no exception” in listing protocols being demanded in workplaces and stores. DeWine and state Health Director Dr. Amy Acton did not make wearing a mask in public mandatory, but masks are required for all workers and customers at all times, including in stores and workplaces. Employers also must conduct daily health assessments of employees, help them maintain 6-foot social distancing and regularly sanitize workplaces and stores. Those who can work from home should continue doing so. Work shifts and lunch hours are expected to be staggered to avoid people congregating and stores are expected to limit the numbers allowed in to avoid crowds and ensure separation. Campgrounds, gyms, larger daycare centers, movie theaters, casinos, health clubs, amusement parks, zoos and museums are among places that will remain closed. DeWine already has closed K-12 classrooms for the rest of the school year.
Coronavirus in Ohio: Death toll surpasses 1,000 as DeWine sells reopening plan, cautions the virus still looms – Gov. Mike DeWine signaled Friday that more businesses could reopen later this month but that it had to be done in a way to avoid having to revert back to more restrictive closures because of a spike in new virus cases. Alternately accused of “moving much too slow” by the open-up-Ohio faction and “moving much too fast” by those frightened by the still-predatory coronavirus, Gov. Mike DeWine worked Friday to reassure both sides. On a day when Ohio’s COVID-19 toll surpassed 1,000 deaths, the governor sold his phased-in plan to reopen businesses as an economic necessity while underlining the precautions being enacted to reduce infection risk. On one hand, DeWine signaled that more reopenings – after the May 12 liberation of retail stores – could come later this month, such as dine-in restaurants, hair salons, barber shops and fitness centers. “Some of these will come fairly quickly” in reopening once best practices are approved, the governor said, adding he wants the scheduled roll-out to succeed and avoid backtracking with closings if virus cases spike. At the same time, he told Ohioans that the deadly respiratory disease is not vanishing and they must remain cautious as they begin a partial return to normalcy in the marketplace. Concern remains, DeWine said, in “not knowing where this virus is going … people are going to have watch what this virus situation is and make decisions.
ACLU study predicts an additional 100,000 COVID-19 deaths in US prisons – A study published by the American Civil Liberties Union last week projects nearly 100,000 additional COVID-19 deaths on top of the current estimates in the US if jail and prison populations are not dramatically reduced. Of this number, 23,000 will succumb behind bars and a further 76,000 in surrounding communities as the virus spreads from guards and released inmates. The study warns that jails will act as “veritable volcanoes for the spread of the virus” and predicts a doubling of the current projection from the Trump administration of 100,000 deaths, and is likely an underestimate. The US has the single largest prison population in the world, with 2.3 million people incarcerated. More than 420,000 Americans work in these facilities as guards or staff. Despite the US containing roughly 4 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for 21 percent of the world’s incarcerated population. At any given time approximately 740,000 are held in overcrowded local jails with constantly revolving populations. Roughly 11 million people pass through the jail system each year – a rate of one person every three seconds. As of 2018, the US was operating at 103.9 percent of prison capacity nationally. With US jails and prisons overflowing, the risk of infection to inmates, staff and community members is accelerating. In Ohio, one in five confirmed COVID-19 positive cases are inmates. On April 19, there were 1,057 cases in the Marion Correctional Facility; by April 22, that number had grown to 2,011 – accounting for 78 percent of the prison population. This rapid growth in cases demonstrates just how quickly the virus can spread in these crowded facilities. The Ohio prison is the only case where all the prisoners were tested and illustrates what must be the true extent of the problem throughout the entire prison and jail systems. The testing also showed that a large percentage of those who tested positive were not showing any symptoms. This is a dire warning to the entire population that without mass testing there are many people who have COVID-19 without knowing it and are passing the infection on to many others. Cook County jail in Chicago has reported 400 inmate infections with six deaths, plus 223 infections and one death among staff. In Michigan, which is one of the hardest hit states, with over 37,000 total confirmed cases, 572 of 889 tests of inmates resulted in positive cases, with more than 200 staff members also infected. The high rate of infections among staff and the large percentage of tests yielding positive cases is a dramatic warning of how severe this situation may become.
Detroit nursing home residents and care workers infected and dying from COVID-19 – At a news conference Monday afternoon Chief Health Officer of the Detroit Health Department Denise Fair reported that 947 residents of the city have died so far in the COVID-19 pandemic. She also reported that 200 residents along with three nursing home workers had died in the city’s 26 nursing homes. While all residents in Detroit’s 26 nursing homes were tested by city EMS workers over the past ten days, only 100 staff have been tested. Fair estimated that there are between 100 and 200 staff employed at each nursing home, meaning thousands of staff remain untested. Newly released data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) shows a total of 2,637 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among nursing home residents throughout the state. Although the data does not include the number who have died in these facilities, there are 488 Michigan nursing homes with 425 of them reporting cases so far or 87 percent of the total. The data includes a breakdown of the number of facilities in each county along with a separate list of the names of each nursing home. There are 85 nursing homes in Wayne County, where Detroit is located, the largest number of facilities in any county. The total number of confirmed cases in Wayne County is 864 and, with 57 of the nursing homes reporting infections, the rate of infection is among the greatest in the state at 15 on average per location. The three counties in the Detroit metropolitan area, Oakland, Macomb and Wayne, combined have 70 percent of the total confirmed coronavirus cases at long-term care facilities in the state. Four of the homes among the list of highest rates of infection in Michigan are run by Villa Healthcare, a Skokie, Illinois-based for-profit nursing home chain with a total of 16 facilities in Michigan. There are 200 cases of coronavirus across twelve of the Villa nursing homes in lower Michigan. According to a report from Democratic Mayor Mike Duggan all 26 nursing homes have cases of COVID-19. In one location, Duggan reported that half of the residents had tested positive. Meanwhile, of all the health care workers and residents who initially tested positive for COVID-19, half of them showed no symptoms of the disease. Duggan said the city would be testing all nursing home staff as a part of a plan to “partner” with employers at grocery stores and other Detroit businesses to sign on to his six-point plan to get all city workers back on the job as part of the effort to reopen the economy while the pandemic continues to rage.
Detroit bus drivers and riders exposed to COVID-19 — “He had the gloves; he had the mask. He did the hand sanitizer, the handwashing. He did it all. The only thing me and him did not do, and the rest of my co-workers are not doing, is we are not able to stay in the house.” The death of Jason Hargrove made headlines around the world. Two weeks before his death, Hargrove posted a video to Facebook, venting his frustration about being exposed to sick passengers on his bus. Voicing the feelings of many workers who are forced to risk their lives to keep society functioning and put food on the table, the video has been viewed over 800,000 times. “I kept my mouth closed, but it’s at some point in time we’ve got to draw the line and say enough is enough.” Infections and deaths are rising to alarming levels among transit workers, along with healthcare, food supply, delivery and other workers deemed essential. In fact, workers in essential industries constitute 36 percent or 2.8 million transit commuters, according to a study by transitcenter.org. As a result, both transit workers and passengers are at high risk, as the bus and subway systems have become a major vector for disease transmission. Although Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has imposed a state-at-home order through mid-May, restaurant, grocery store, Amazon, nursing home and other essential workers must show up for work or lose their income. Detroit is one of the epicenters of the COVID-19 disease, with 8,613 cases and 922 deaths as of this writing. The tri-county metropolitan area has more than half the 37,778 cases and 3,315 deaths. The high number of deaths is directly tied to diabetes, hypertension, obesity and other ill health associated with high levels of poverty. After decades of plant closures and mass layoffs, Detroit – which has the highest per capita income of any US city in 1960 – has been poorest big city in America for decades. For at least 25 percent of the residents of the “Motor City,” the bus is their only transportation option because they cannot afford a car. The cost of car ownership in Detroit is the highest out of any city in the country. The average cost of car insurance is $5,414 per year, over 20 percent of the typical household income of $26,300.
Officials scale back McCormick Place plans by 2,000 beds as coronavirus curve flattens – Chicago Tribune City and state officials have decided to open 2,000 fewer beds at the McCormick Place medical center for now, citing the slowing growth of COVID-19 cases in Illinois.McCormick originally was supposed to have 3,000 beds in case Chicago-area hospitals were hit with more coronavirus patients than they could handle at once. For the time being, however, a planned 1,750-bed hall won’t be opened. And a separate hall for sicker patients has been scaled back by 250 beds. In recent weeks, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has said Illinois has been bending the curve, meaning the number of cases is growing at a slower rate than it was. Around the beginning of April, cases were doubling every 3.6 days, and as of mid-April, that had been stretched to about 8.2 days. “We have made alterations at McCormick Place where there are fewer beds that will be available than the original plan because it appears, at least for the moment, that we’re only gradually increasing the number of … hospitalizations and the result of that is we will probably need fewer beds there,” Pritzker said Saturday.
April 27 Update: US COVID-19 Test Results: Disappointing – Disappointing, but might be weekend related. From The Hill: Fauci confident US will double coronavirus testing capacity over next several weeks Fauci said in a webcast hosted by the National Academy of Sciences that that the U.S. is currently averaging between 1.5 million and 2 million tests per week. “We probably should get up to twice that as we get into the next several weeks, and I think we will,” Fauci said. “Testing is an important part of what we’re doing, but it is not the only part.” … “You need enough tests so when you’re doing what we’re trying to do right now, which is trying to ease our way back, that you can very easily identify, test, contact trace and get those who are infected out of society so they don’t infect others,” he said, adding that positive test results should account for less than 10 percent of tests administered. Based on these comments, the US might be able to test 400,000 to 600,000 people per day in several weeks – and that would probably be sufficient for test and trace. There were 135,505 test results reported over the last 24 hours. (chart) This data is from the COVID Tracking Project. The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 16.2% (red line). The US probably needs enough tests to push the percentage positive below 5%, although Dr. Fauci said below 10% (probably much lower based on testing in New Zealand).
Coronavirus Is Spreading Through Rural South’s High-Risk Population – Reopening Economies will Make it Worse – In the rural South, the COVID-19 pandemic is becoming a silent disaster.As rural residents commute to jobs in cities and transportation hubs, they’re being exposed to the virus and bringing it home to a population already at risk.Chronic diseases that can lead to more severe COVID-19 symptoms are common across the rural South. The population is older and poorer than much of the country, and the health care system has been deteriorating for years as hospitals lose staff and close.Despite the population’s vulnerability, Southern states have been a stronghold of resistance to federal and international recommendations around COVID-19 protective measures. Most of the states’ delays and refusalsto enact “shelter-at-home” policies were tied to economic arguments.Now, governors are using the same economic reasons for loosening those restrictions. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called for reopening several types of businesses, including hair salons, starting Friday and restaurants and even theaters starting Monday, despite concerns from public health officials. Mississippi is also considering lifting its shelter-at-home orders for economic reasons. When that happens, service workers, once partially protected from exposure, will find themselves at greater risk.As University of Mississippi sociologists who work with rural communities on a range of resilience issues, especially health, we are concerned about the economic and health consequences of returning to business before the region is prepared to protect its residents.Rural Commuters on the Urban Front Lines Rural areas may seem isolated from the coronavirus threat, but in the South, one in 12 rural residents commutes to an urban hub for work. Many of those jobs are on the front lines of health care and service industries, where exposure to other people is hard to avoid. In much of the South, “shelter-at-home” orders have had loose interpretations of “essential personnel” who are exempted from the order. They include employees in high-exposure jobs – cashiers, fast food workers and registered nurses, all among the largest employment areas for Southern states. Many of these workers are less likely to have sick leave or be able to work from home. And they are paid lower wages, so many still go to work even when they’re sick.
‘This is a potential public health disaster:’ COVID-19 results from TestUtah.com are raising questions – The accuracy of coronavirus tests by TestUtah.com has come into question, with state data showing that the rate of positive results among people tested at its sites is less than half what it is for patients tested elsewhere in the state. And medical experts have been raising concerns about the effort, which has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to the Utah tech companies running it here and in two other states. While Utah’s larger health care systems have relied on national names in diagnostics for their coronavirus tests, TestUtah has obtained its tests from a smaller Salt Lake City company and is processing them at a regional hospital in Orem. “I worry about having tests routed to a small community hospital lab inexperienced with highly complex molecular testing that uses a test from an unknown company without much in vitro diagnostic experience,” Bert Lopansri, a specialist in infectious diseases and microbiology at Intermountain Healthcare, wrote in an April 14 email that The Salt Lake Tribune obtained through an open records request after it circulated through state offices. “A pandemic is not the time for amateurs to learn,” Lopansri concluded.
US capital sees highest one-day jump in COVID-19 cases – The nation’s capital recorded the highest single-day jump in confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday as cases spiked by 335 as testing expands. Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said city officials have “always known” that their peak in number of daily cases was going to come in May, and that officials expect the trend to continue. “And so while we are hearing reports of a flattening of the curve, and certainly we have less cases today than we thought we would when we started our response, we have not hit our peak,” she said during an interview with local NBC affiliate WRC-TV. Total cases in the district now stand at 4,658 with deaths at 231 after seven were added Friday, according to official data. D.C.’s upward trend is indicative of the wider capital region with Maryland seeing a massive upsurge in cases with 1,730 more reported there Friday, raising the state’s total to 23,472. And in Virginia 929 new positives were recorded, raising the commonwealth’s total to 16,109. Deaths in Maryland stand at 1,098 after 51 people died of the virus on Thursday, and fatalities in Virginia are nearing 600. Bowser and the governors of Virginia and Maryland have said they want to see a downward trend in cases and hospitalizations before they begin the process to reopen their localities, indicating shelter-in-place orders are unlikely to be lifted anytime soon.
Illinois Reports Largest Daily Rise in Cases as New Stay-at-Home Order Takes Effect – On the same day Illinois’ modified stay-at-home order took effect, the state reported more than 3,000 new coronavirus cases, the highest daily increase in the state since the pandemic began. There were 3,137 additional cases confirmed in the last 24 hours, health officials announced. That brings the state total to 56,055. May 1 briefing: Gov. J.B. Pritzker details his plan for how to implement contact tracing in Illinois. The state also reported an additional 105 fatalities, lifting the total number of deaths associated with the virus to 2,457. The additional cases and deaths come as officials believe Illinois is near a peak. Illinois’ modified stay-at-home order took effect Friday, though Gov. J.B. Pritzker is currently in a legal battle over the extension. The new order mandates face coverings for all Illinois residents who must go to public spaces, like grocery stores, where social distancing isn’t possible. It also allows for the reopening of several businesses across the state, as well as golf courses and state parks. Meanwhile, dozens of people gathered in Chicago’s Loop to protest the new order, calling for Pritzker to reopen the state.
Connecticut has one of the nation’s highest coronavirus death tolls. Here’s why. – Hartford Courant — With 2,257 coronavirus-linked fatalities so far, Connecticut has experienced one of the nation’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks, enduring more reported deaths than some entire countries. Despite its small size, Connecticut has had more total fatalities than states such as California, Texas, Florida and Washington – as well as the nations of Mexico, Portugal, Turkey and Switzerland, among others. Per capita, Connecticut ranks third nationwide in deaths, behind only New York and New Jersey. Advertisement Fairfield, New Haven and Hartford counties all rank among the 25 U.S. counties with the most coronavirus-linked deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Beyond the numbers, the deaths have written a new and tragic chapter in the state’s history. Connecticut has seen the deaths of medical workers and nursing home residents, of long-married couples and vibrant young people. Through much of it, the state’s coronavirus victims have died alone and their loved ones have grieved alone. There is no single answer to the question of why COVID-19 has been so deadly in Connecticut. But experts point to a confluence of factors, including the state’s proximity to New York, its density, the age of its population and its lack of significant social distancing measures until well into March. New York City has been the nation’s largest COVID-19 hot spot, accounting for more than 20% of all deaths nationally, and Connecticut has seemed to suffer from its proximity to the city. Early on, at least, Fairfield County residents likely contracted the virus in New York, then brought it home. “We have people still going into New York daily to commute to work,” Norwalk Mayor Harry Rilling noted in late March, when his town already had more than 100 cases. “It’s hard to tell them to quarantine because they may be an essential employee in New York.” The apparent path of the virus, from Fairfield County into New Haven and then Hartford, supports the idea that Connecticut’s outbreak largely began in New York, where an array of factors – from people riding packed subways to the city’s role as an international hub – have contributed to a devastating impact. “What we saw was that the communities closest to New York City were hit first and were hit hardest, and then the virus spread across the state,”
‘It’s horrific’: coronavirus kills nearly 70 at Massachusetts veterans’ home – Nearly 70 residents sickened with the coronavirus have died at a Massachusetts home for ageing veterans, as state and federal officials try to figure out what went wrong in the deadliest known outbreak at a long-term care facility in the US. While the death toll at the state-run Holyoke Soldiers’ Home continues to climb, federal officials are investigating whether residents were denied proper medical care and the state’s top prosecutor is deciding whether to bring legal action. The superintendent, Bennett Walsh, said this month that state officials knew that the home was in “crisis mode” when it came to staffing shortages and were notified early and often about the contagion at the facility. Staffing problems that plagued the home for years contributed to the virus spreading like wildfire, said Joan Miller, a nurse at the home. Because staffing was so tight, workers from one unit were constantly moving to others to help out – and bringing their germs with them, she said. At one point, a unit was shut down because there wasn’t enough staff to operate it, and those veterans were moved into close quarters in other parts of the building, she said. “Geriatricians and experts in long-term care medicine were sounding alarms at the beginning of March and we’ve essentially been ignored by everyone: federal, state, local government and the nursing home industry,” he said. There is currently no official count of nursing home deaths across the country. The federal government has only recently required the nation’s more than 15,000 nursing homes to start reporting numbers of confirmed and presumed deaths and infections, but it is not yet clear when that count will be published. In the meantime, the Associated Press has been compiling its own tally from state health departments and media reports, finding at least 13,762 deaths from outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities across the country. But that is probably an undercount because only about half the states are currently reporting nursing home deaths and not all count those who died without being tested for Covid-19.
Coronavirus cases surged in educated and affluent Massachusetts. The decline has yet to come. – Massachusetts has one of the most educated and affluent populations in the country. It’s home to some of the nation’s most preeminent medical centers. And it has political leaders who have worked cooperatively, across party lines, in the face of a crisis. Massachusetts also has the third-highest number of confirmed state coronavirus cases, along with the fourth-highest death toll. And despite predictions that numbers would be falling by now after a month and a half of people staying at home, new case counts have instead remained stubbornly high. The state’s struggle to combat the coronavirus reflects just what a tenacious adversary it really is. Even for a place that has a lot going for it, the toll has been severe – and it is growing by the day. As of Friday, Massachusetts had more than 64,000 cases – behind only New York and New Jersey, its larger northeastern neighbors. New cases totaled 2,106, continuing a dismal streak lasting more than two weeks of at least 1,500 additional cases per day. Deaths hit 3,716, behind only New York, New Jersey and Michigan. Even as many states began opening up their economies Friday – allowing restaurants, shopping malls and hair salons to do business – that remained a distant prospect in Massachusetts. Instead, Gov. Charlie Baker (R) on Friday was announcing new restrictions, including a requirement that people wear masks while in public. “This is going to be a way of life,” Baker said. “No ifs, no ands, no buts, no doubts.”
Coronavirus dashboard for April 30: the US has the worst record in the world, by far –Here is the update through yesterday (April 29):Number of new and total reported Infections (from Johns Hopkins via arcgis.com and 91-divoc.com):
- Number: South Korea: ZERO (4 detected from incoming flights at airport)
- Number: Taiwan: ZERO
- Number: Vietnam: ZERO
- Number: Germany: 1,627 (up from 988 on April 27; 3 day average of 1,256 down -81.5% from 6,790 peak on April 1-3) (highlighted in graph below)
- Number: US: up +24,114 to 1,040,488 (vs. day/day high of +36,161 on April 24; 3 day average of 24,709, down -26.1% from 33,437 peak on April 8-10)(#1 in the world, 5.7x #2 Spain)(outlier at top of graph below)
There has been a slight decrease in the number of new cases in the US. The US has the worst record in the world, by far.
I have discontinued tracking the rate of new cases and deaths each day. That was to determine if we were “bending the curve.” We were. the issue now is whether cases will continue to go down in any significant way or not. Number of deaths and infections and rate of increase of testing (from COVID Tracking Project)
- ***Number of deaths: Total 52,525, increase of +2,700 day/day (new daily high)
- Seven day average of deaths: 1,722 vs. 2,058 peak on April 21
- Number of tests: 230,442 (vs. 300,833 daily peak on April 25*)**
- Ratio of positive tests to total: 8.4:1 (vs. 8.7 on April 27)
In the past two weeks, as shown in the graph above, the percentage of positive to total tests has declined from about 20% to 12%,or an average of -4% a week. If this should fall to 6%, then based on the history of South Korea, lockdowns can begin to be judiciously lifted and a thoroughgoing regimen of “test, trace, and isolate” can be begun.
A Navy Destroyer Is Heading To Port, Crippled By Another COVID-19 Outbreak At Sea – Will yet another major US Navy warship be disabled by the coronavirus pandemic like the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier fiasco? The Navy now reports its Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, the USS Kidd has at least 33 confirmed COVID-19 cases among the crew, nearly doubling in the last few days from an initial 18 cases reported last Thursday.The destroyer has a total crew of 350 and is currently off the Pacific coast of South America. Its mission is reportedly related to US counter-narcotics operations off coastal waters of South America.At least two sailors have been medically evacuated from the ship to military hospitals in San Antonio, and the destroyer has since begun returning to port for deep a disinfecting cleaning and further testing of crew.”The first patient transported is already improving and will self-isolate. We are taking every precaution to ensure we identify, isolate, and prevent any further spread onboard the ship,” commander US Naval Forces Southern Command and 4th Fleet, Rear Admiral Don Gabrielson, said.The Navy also indicated all crew have donned N95 masks and other personal protective equipment in efforts to contain the spread. Furthermore an amphibious assault ship identified as the USS Makin Island has been sent to aid the USS Kidd at sea. The Makin Island reportedly has a team of naval doctors aboard, including intensive care capacity and ventilators.The USS Kidd plans to ramp up testing of all its crew as fears mount of another possible USS Roosevelt catastrophe. In that ongoing crisis the nuclear carrier starting late last month into April was stricken with over 850 coronavirus cases, among a crew of almost 5,000 – forcing it to dock at Guam and cut short its mission in the West Pacific.
Coronavirus live updates: Global cases top 3 million, Japan unemployment rate rises – More than 3 million people are now reported to have been infected by the coronavirus around the world and over 210,800 have died from the respiratory disease Covid-19, data from Johns Hopkins University showed. The virus outbreak was reported in China’s Hubei province late last year before it spread rapidly to all parts of the world in mere months. Hopkins’ data showed the United States has more than 987,000 confirmed cases of infection and a death toll of over 56,000. Spain has more than 229,400 reported cases while Italy has over 199,400 cases. France, Germany and the United Kingdom each have more than 158,000 cases.China’s National Health Commission said it confirmed six new cases of infection, with half of them attributed to travelers from overseas. No new deaths were reported, the same as yesterday. There were 40 asymptomatic cases. Cumulative confirmed cases in mainland China totaled 82,836 and 4,633 people have died. On April 17, the cumulative death toll rose substantially after an investigation in the city of Wuhan, where the outbreak was first reported, added 1,290 deaths. Japan’s March jobless rate rose to its highest level in a year, while job availability fell to a more than three-year low, according to official data, Reuters reported. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 2.5% and the jobs-to-applications ratio fell to 1.39 in March, the news agency said. While the unemployment rate appears relatively low compared to how other economies are faring in the global economic crisis fueled by the coronavirus pandemic, it could put more pressure on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to inject more stimulus into the Japanese economy. His government has already approved a stimulus package worth 108 trillion yen ($990 billion), or 20% of Japan’s economic output, Reuters reported. Japan has more than 13,400 cases of infection and a national emergency is in place until May 6 for seven regions including Tokyo and Osaka. Local media reported that the government is considering if it would be extended. –
- Global cases: More than 3 million
- Global deaths: More than 210,800
- Most cases reported: United States (987,022), Spain (229,422), Italy (199,414), France (165,962), and Germany (158,434).
The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University as of 8:42 a.m. Beijing time.
Map and charts showing the spread of the novel coronavirus – Reuters graphics
Global coronavirus death toll could be 60% higher than reported – FT – The death toll from coronavirus may be almost 60 per cent higher than reported in official counts, according to an FT analysis of overall fatalities during the pandemic in 14 countries. Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across these locations, considerably higher than the 77,000 official Covid-19 deaths reported for the same places and time periods. If the same level of under-reporting observed in these countries was happening worldwide, the global Covid-19 death toll would rise from the current official total of 201,000 to as high as 318,000. To calculate excess deaths, the FT has compared deaths from all causes in the weeks of a location’s outbreak in March and April 2020 to the average for the same period between 2015 and 2019. The total of 122,000 amounts to a 50 per cent rise in overall mortality relative to the historical average for the locations studied. In all the countries analysed except Denmark, excess deaths far outnumbered the official coronavirus death tolls. The accuracy of official death statistics from the virus is limited by how effectively a country is testing people to confirm cases. Some countries, including China, have retrospectively revised up their death tolls from the disease.
A new analysis of coronavirus deaths suggests that official tolls are massively undercounting all over the world A new analysis of coronavirus deaths in 14 countries found that official death tolls are likely massively understating the true scale of the pandemic.The Financial Times studied the number of deaths from all causes in 14 countries in March and April, then compared that figure with the average for the same period between 2015 and 2019. It concluded that the difference between the two was a reasonable estimate of how many extra deaths the pandemic had caused.The Financial Times found that the death toll calculated this way was almost 60% higher than the various countries’ official death tolls: a total of 122,000 deaths above normal levels, compared with 77,000 from the official numbers.It has long been clear that official figures – usually from national health ministries – are not capturing all the deaths from the pandemic. Some governments, for instance, do not include deaths in care homes.The Financial Times said its figure might also capture deaths that are indirectly attributable to the virus – for example, people who died of other health problems because national systems were overwhelmed with virus patients. But it said most were directly related to the virus. “Excess mortality has risen most steeply in places suffering the worst COVID-19 outbreaks, suggesting most of these deaths are directly related to the virus rather than simply side-effects of lockdowns,” the report said.
UK coronavirus death toll passes 26,000 as government admits to 4,000 fatalities outside hospitals – The UK coronavirus death toll reached 26,097 yesterday. Confirming the naked criminality of the Johnson government’s pursuit of its “herd immunity” policy, it admitted that an additional 3,811 deaths took place between March 2 and April 28. Around 70 percent of these were “outside hospital settings,” mainly in care homes and private residences. In addition to the 3,811 deaths, a further 765 fatalities were reported in the 24 hours to 5 p.m. Tuesday, of which around 600 died in hospital. Deaths in hospitals in England alone are approaching 20,000 (19,740). The UK is fast becoming the centre of the pandemic in Europe and is set to surpass the 27,682 deaths already recorded in Italy. Italy’s death toll is the second worst in the world after the United States, which has 61,656 deaths. The government is only now releasing the number of deaths in care homes due to growing public outrage over elderly and vulnerable people being allowed to die without any protection, as the coronavirus ripped through residential homes that have been turned into killing fields. Despite its admission of thousands more deaths outside hospitals, the government is still vastly under-reporting the true number of COVID-19 fatalities. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has already reported 6,000 deaths in care homes, and in just the two weeks to April 24, the Care Quality Commission was notified of 4,343 deaths from COVID-19 in care homes. In Scotland, deaths as a result of COVID-19 account for half of reported fatalities in care homes. The National Records of Scotland reported Wednesday that by April 26 there had been 2,272 COVID-19-linked deaths. Of these, 338 of the 656 deaths recorded between April 20 and 26 were in care homes. Speaking to BBC Radio Four Tuesday, Professor David Spiegelhalter, a University of Cambridge statistician, said, “What we are seeing is a massive increase in deaths. … While COVID deaths in hospitals have been steadily declining since April 8 and now number around 400-450 a day, new Care Quality Commission data show that last week there were around 350-400 COVID deaths in English care-homes each day. When we add in deaths at home, this suggests there are now about as many COVID deaths out of hospital as in hospital. And while hospital deaths are steadily decreasing, there is no sign yet that we are past the peak in care homes.” The government’s daily figures have never included the figures recorded by the ONS of more than 880 people with coronavirus dying at home in England and Wales since the first death in the UK at the end of February. The ONS has also recorded 190 coronavirus deaths in hospices. Even the pro-Tory Daily Mail reported Wednesday that the new “tally still falls thousands short of the reality. … The Government will only include people who have tested positive for the virus in its statistics, despite rationing almost all the testing kits to hospitals for the first month of the outbreak, meaning thousands of people may have died without ever being diagnosed.”
British Doctors Say Ventilators Purchased From China Could Kill Coronavirus Patients – Senior British doctors and medical managers have raised concerns over 250 ventilators the United Kingdom purchased from China. If these ventilators are used in hospital, the group warns “significant patient harm, including death,” according to a letter seen by NBC News.The ventilators received from China, the Shangrila 510 model, were built by one of the country’s major ventilator manufacturers, Beijing Aeonmed Co. Ltd. The manufacturer could not be reached for comment. The letter detailed serious concerns over the “basic” quality of the ventilators, calling the oxygen supply “variable and unreliable.” The doctors said that the machines are also unfamiliar to British doctors and were built for ambulance use, rather than hospital use. Addressed directly to a senior NHS official, the letter stated: “We look forward to the withdrawal and replacement of these ventilators with devices better able to provide intensive care ventilation for our patients.” The NHS redirected Newsweek to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for comment. The DHSC said the Shangrila 510 ventilator model is being kept as a reserve and is not currently in use at any hospitals. “Ventilators need to pass robust regulatory tests to ensure they are up to standard before they’re delivered to NHS hospitals,” a government spokesperson told Newsweek.
Kawasaki disease symptoms in kids in UK possibly linked to coronavirus – The discovery of a potential link between an inflammatory condition in children and coronavirus has important implications for developing an effective vaccine, Australian scientists say. British health authorities reported as many as 12 children, some of whom tested positive to COVID-19, were seriously ill in hospital with severe inflammation in the body. It prompted Britain’s National Health Service to issue an alert warning that the condition could be related to COVID-19 in children, or that there “may be another as-yet-unidentified infectious pathogen associated with these cases”. The children had symptoms similar to toxic shock syndrome and a condition known as Kawasaki disease, where kids experience abdominal pain, gastrointestinal symptoms and cardiac inflammation. ANU professor Peter Collignon, an infectious disease physician and microbiologist, said scientists needed to know more about why kids under 15 got the mystery inflammatory condition and whether there was a link with COVID-19. “We do need to study these children because we still don’t understand why children seem to get this [COVID-19] infection so much less than adults, but also why some people are getting these unusual reactions,” he said.
More cases of rare syndrome in children reported globally – Doctors around the world have reported more cases of a rare but potentially lethal inflammatory syndrome in children that appears to be linked to coronavirus infections. Nearly 100 cases of the unusual illness have emerged in at least six countries, with doctors in Britain, the US, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland now reported to be investigating the condition. The first cases came to light this week when the NHS issued an alert to paediatricians about a number of children admitted to intensive care units with a mix of toxic shock and a condition known as Kawasaki disease, an inflammatory disorder that affects the blood vessel, heart and other organs. So far 19 children have been affected in the UK and none have died. The French health minister, Olivier Veran, said on Wednesday that the country had more than a dozen children with inflammation around the heart, and while there was insufficient evidence to prove a link with coronavirus, he said the cases were being taken “very seriously.” Veran told Franceinfo news radio he had received an alert from Paris concerning “about 15 children of all ages”, adding that other cases had been reported in Spain, Italy and Switzerland. He listed the symptoms as fever, digestive problems and vascular inflammation. At least three children in the US aged six months to eight years are being treated for a similar condition. Mark Gorelik, a specialist treating the patients at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, said all had fever and inflammation of the heart and gut. “Right now, we’re at the very beginning of trying to understand what that represents,” he told Reuters. Gorelik believes the cases are not Kawasaki disease but a similar condition that shares a common cause, namely an infectious agent that triggers an immune response. The three New York cases follow a report from Stanford University in California, in which a 6-month-old was admitted to hospital with Kawasaki disease and was later diagnosed with coronavirus. Many of the children having treatment for the new syndrome have tested positive for coronavirus, but others have not. That could mean that the syndrome is not related to coronavirus, that the children had cleared the virus before they were tested, or that the test missed the infection. Some doctors suspect the syndrome is a “post-infection inflammatory response” where the immune system overreacts in the wake of an infection. This would suggest that in some children the disease has two phases – the initial infection and a secondary immune response that takes hold later.
Balkans: Virus cases surpass 34,500 – The tally of coronavirus cases in the Western Balkan countries has risen to 34,598, with nearly 1,500 deaths in the region. In the last 24 hours, six more people died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, in Serbia, bringing the total number of fatalities to 185. The number of cases on Friday climbed to 9,205, with 285 new cases. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said the country has reached the lowest infection rate since the start of the outbreak. Serbia imposed a night curfew on Friday to prevent citizens from gathering outside to celebrate the May 1 holiday. In Montenegro, no new cases have been reported since Monday. So far, the tally of infections stands at 322, with seven deaths. In North Macedonia, 1,494 cases and 81 death have been recorded so far. The government last week relaxed curfew hours but group gatherings remain prohibited and face masks are compulsory in public spaces. In Albania, there are 782 cases of the virus, with 31 deaths. In Croatia, the number of cases increased to 2,085, while deaths in the country rose to 75. In Slovenia, the tally of cases is at 1,434 with 92 deaths, in Romania 12,567 with 726, in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1,771 with 70, in Bulgaria 1,541 with 66, and in Kosovo 806 with 22.
Russia now has second-highest rate of Covid-19 spread as other countries ease restrictions – Up to 2% of Moscow’s population may be infected with coronavirus, the city’s mayor warned on Saturday, as hospitals in the Russian capital were overwhelmed and another top government tested positive. Covid-19 took hold relatively late in Russia, but is now growing fast, with the country showing the second-highest spread of the disease in the world. A record 9,623 new cases on Saturday indicated infections have not yet reached a plateau. If Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s estimate is correct, that would mean more than 240,000 people may have the virus, four times official figures for the city. Hospitals in the capital are already at capacity, with television footage showing ambulances forced to wait for hours to deliver the infected. On Friday authorities announced the housing minister was the latest top official to test positive. Vladimir Putin has not been pictured in public for nearly a month and is working from his residence outside Moscow. There are fears outbreaks may have festered undetected in other areas that initially appeared to have escaped the worst ravages of the disease. In Somalia, medics, funeral workers and gravediggers have reported an unprecedented surge of deaths in recent days in the capital Mogadishu, suggesting official counts of Covid-19 deaths — currently just 601 confirmed cases and 28 deaths — reflect only a fraction of the virus’s toll. Mohamed Osman Warsame, an ambulance driver, said he had transported between 15 and 18 corpses to cemeteries in the capital every day for the last two weeks, many times above the usual daily figure of between two and four. “There are a lot of deaths. It is like we are in a deadly war. People are dying so fast,” Warsame said. On the island of Bali, an entire hamlet has been locked down after rapid testing showed hundreds of residents were probably infected, the Jakarta Post reported. Out of 1,200 initial tests, 400 returned a reactive result; authorities will follow up with swab tests to confirm infection rates. Increasingly intense efforts to stop the spread of the disease have raised concerns about human rights and civil liberties. Malaysia has been criticised by the UN after detaining hundreds of undocumented migrants, including young children and Rohingya refugees, as part of its efforts to contain coronavirus. The UN said the arrests could push vulnerable groups into hiding and prevent them from seeking treatment, and warned that overcrowded detention centres carried a high risk of increasing the virus’s spread. Privacy advocates in India have also attacked a government order that all public and private sector employees should use a government-backed Bluetooth tracing app, as New Delhi begins easing some of its lockdown measures in lower-risk areas. Worldwide there are now 3.4 million cases of coronavirus and more than 238,000 deaths, although many countries that have passed the peak of their infections are now working on relaxing their lockdown restrictions.
Coronavirus updates: Brazil emerging as potentially next big hot spot as death toll worldwide tops 200,000 – Brazil is emerging as potentially the next big hot spot for the coronavirus amid President Jair Bolsonaro’s insistence that it is just a “little flu” and that there is no need for the sharp restrictions that have slowed the infection’s spread in Europe and the U.S. As some U.S. states and European countries moved gradually Monday to ease their limits on movement and commerce, the intensifying outbreak in Brazil – Latin America’s biggest country, with 211 million people – pushed some hospitals to the breaking point, with signs that a growing number of victims are now dying at home. “We have all the conditions here for the pandemic to become much more serious,” said Paulo Brandao, a virologist at the University of Sao Paulo. Brazil officially reported about 4,500 deaths and almost 67,000 confirmed infections. But the true numbers there, as in many other countries, are believed to be vastly higher given the lack of testing and the many people without severe symptoms who haven’t sought hospital care. Some scientists said over 1 million in Brazil are probably infected. The country is heading into winter, which can worsen respiratory illnesses. Worldwide, the death toll topped 210,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. The number of dead in the U.S. surpassed 55,000 – close to the 58,000 U.S. troops killed during the Vietnam War. Italy, Britain, Spain and France accounted for more than 20,000 deaths each.In other developments:
- – U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that deaths in the United States from the coronavirus could reach as high as 70,000, after putting the number at 60,000 several times earlier this month.
- – The Trump administration worked to draw up new guidelines for how restaurants, schools, churches and businesses can safely reopen. The White House also unveiled what it described as a comprehensive overview of its efforts to make enough tests for COVID-19 available so states can sample at least 2.6% of their populations each month.
- – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson returned to work after a bout with the virus and warned strongly against easing his own country’s lockdown too soon: “I refuse to throw away all the effort and the sacrifice of the British people and to risk a second major outbreak and huge loss of life.”
Coronavirus: Oxford vaccine effective in monkeys, heading for mass production in India – A leading candidate for a Covid-19 vaccine has shown promising results in animal trials, and is expected to see mass production in India within months. The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines by volume, said on Tuesday that it plans this year to produce up to 60 million doses of a potential vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, which is under clinical trial in Britain. While the vaccine candidate, called “ChAdOx1 nCoV-19”, is yet to be proven to work against Covid-19, Serum decided to start manufacturing it as it had shown success in animal trials and had progressed to tests on humans, Serum Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla said. Six rhesus macaque monkeys were inoculated with the vaccine candidate at the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana last month, according to The New York Times. The subjects were exposed afterwards to large quantities of the novel coronavirus, but all six remained healthy after more than 28 days, the newspaper reported, citing researcher Vincent Munster, who conducted the test.
Hundreds die in Iran over false belief drinking methanol cures coronavirus – Health workers in Iran are warning people to not fall for coronavirus hoaxes, after 700 people died from alcohol poisoning amid claims drinking bootleg liquor can keep the virus at bay. A report released by the Iranian Government earlier this month showed alcohol poisoning over a two-month period was 10 times the number of cases during the whole of 2019, likely spurred by the COVID-19 epidemic.The national coroner’s authority said alcohol poisoning killed 728 Iranians between February 20 and April 7. Last year there were only 66 deaths from alcohol poisoning, according to the report. “People think that alcohol causes immunity to corona, while drinking alcohol does not eliminate corona in the body,” a medical expert recently told the Government-aligned Tasnim News Agency. Iran is facing one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the Middle East.(Reuters: Nazanin Tabatabaee) Coronavirus update: Follow the latest news in our daily wrap.Along with Turkey, Iran is facing one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the Middle East with 5,806 deaths and more than 91,000 confirmed cases. Iranian health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said 525 people had died from swallowing toxic methanol alcohol since February 20, according to local state TV.He said a total of 5,011 people had been poisoned from methanol alcohol, adding that about 90 people had lost their eyesight or were suffering eye damage from the alcohol poisoning.
Pakistan: COVID-19 cases top 17,000, deaths near 400 – The number of coronavirus cases in Pakistan passed 17,000 and the death toll moved close to 400 on Friday. The Health Ministry said 1,322 more people tested positive for COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, raising the overall case count to 17,439. A total of 33 fatalities across the country raised the death toll to 391, the ministry said. Overall, 4,315 patients have recovered since Pakistan’s first COVID-19 case was reported on Feb. 26, the ministry added. More than 3.25 million people in 187 countries and regions have been infected since the virus emerged in China last December, with the US and Europe the hardest-hit areas in the world. A significant number of COVID-19 patients – over 1.05 million – have recovered, but the disease has also claimed over 235,000 lives so far, according to data compiled by the Johns Hopkins University in the US.
Coronavirus pandemic surges across South Asia, even as governments push for a return to work – The global coronavirus pandemic, which has recorded over 3 million cases and more than 210,000 deaths worldwide, is rapidly spreading throughout South Asia. The response of governments in the region to this emergency underscores the contempt of the rival national bourgeois ruling elites for hundreds of millions of working people and rural toilers. Given the region’s densely populated urban centres – including Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata in India; Karachi and Lahore in Pakistan; Dhaka in Bangladesh; and Colombo in Sri Lanka – the appalling state of its public healthcare systems, widespread poverty and lack of universal access to clean water and sanitation, the disease threatens to kill millions, even tens of millions, of people in South Asia alone. Yet despite this very real danger, South Asia’s governments have failed to take any substantial measures to effectively combat the pandemic. Their response has largely been limited to social distancing measures, including lockdowns, and travel bans. All of South Asia’s governments have strictly rationed COVID-19 tests, thereby covering up the true extent of the pandemic. As of yesterday, India had reported 29,451 confirmed cases with 939 deaths. All of India has been under a lockdown since March 24. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi implemented this shutdown without warning and without any serious plan to provide basic necessities to the impoverished masses, who make up the vast majority of India’s population. The lockdown, which was initially slated to end on April 14, has since been extended a further 19 days through May 3. The Modi government is now preparing to restart the economy in line with demands from big business and investors to secure their profit interests. Last week, the manufacturing and farming sectors were allowed to start operating, but without any measures taken to ensure worker safety. The Home Ministry announced Friday that small retail shops outside “hotspots” and cities under quarantine could reopen. However, they will only be allowed to operate with half of their staff. Customers must maintain social distancing, and wear masks and gloves. The reckless and sudden imposition of the lockdown by the Modi government proved disastrous for hundreds of millions of working people and the rural poor. No mechanism was put in place to support the vast majority of workers in the so-called informal sector, who were left without wages and now face hunger and starvation. Modi is cynically exploiting the plight of these workers to justify his plan to reopen the economy.
Coronavirus: suicide experts warn of pandemic’s impact on mental health, with Hong Kong’s jobless, poor and elderly most at risk A leading Hong Kong mental health expert has warned that the city might be on the brink of a surge in suicides brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. Professor Paul Yip Siu-fai, director of the University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention, is part of an international group of mental health experts who have sounded the alert on the pandemic’s potential psychological impact worldwide. Among those most at risk are workers who have lost their jobs, those facing severe financial hardship and elderly people who feel cooped up at home because of restrictions on movement during the crisis. Yip said prolonged restrictions and social-distancing measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus could have an effect on some people’s well-being. If urgent action was not taken to reach out to the vulnerable, he warned, Hong Kong could see a higher rate of suicide than during the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which also battered the economy. He is part of the recently formed International Covid-19 Suicide Prevention Research Collaboration, comprising 42 academics worldwide, who urged a comprehensive prevention strategy to deal with the psychological effects that might outlast the pandemic itself.
Japan to decide whether to extend state of emergency as early as Monday – broadcaster NHK – (Reuters) – Japan will formally decide as early as Monday whether to extend its nationwide state of emergency, public broadcaster NHK reported, as experts said current containment policies should be kept in place until the number of new infections fell further. The nationwide state of emergency is set to expire on May 6, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned citizens on Thursday to prepare for a “drawn-out battle” against the virus. The government is planning to extend the emergency for about a month, sources have told Reuters. Some countries are restarting business activity after closures and social distancing measures to contain the spread of the virus, even as Japan has seen far fewer infections and deaths than hot spots in the United States and Europe. The outbreak and slowdown in business activities is already darkening the outlook for the world’s third-biggest economy, sparking calls for more spending even after parliament approved an extra budget to fund a $1.1 trillion (Pound Sterling875 billion) stimulus package. Consumer prices in the capital Tokyo fell for the first time in three years in April and national factory activity slumped, data showed on Friday, increasing worries the coronavirus outbreak could tip the country back into deflation. The Japanese government has called for vigilance during the long Golden Week holiday – normally a peak travel period – that runs through May 6, calling on people to stay home and reduce contact with others. The government will make a formal decision on the state of emergency as soon as Monday after convening a meeting of experts on the virus, NHK said on Friday, without citing sources. At Friday’s meeting, the experts said it was desirable for Japan to keep its current framework of coronavirus containment policies until the number of new infections fell to a certain unspecified level, Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told reporters.
Ruby Princess cruise ship forced out of Australian waters with coronavirus stricken staff on board – The coronavirus-stricken Ruby Princess was forced out to sea by Australian authorities last Thursday afternoon, despite what New South Wales (NSW) Police Commissioner Mick Fuller described as “not a zero risk” of serious illness developing on board. Around half the crew were allowed to leave the ship earlier in the week and fly home. The remaining workers face another two weeks on board as the cruise liner makes its way from Port Kembla, south of Sydney, to Manila, where several of its sister ships are currently moored. It is not clear where the ship or its crew will go after the Philippines, but the company has made clear it still intends to use the Ruby Princess for cruises between Seattle and Alaska as early as July. Of the 567 workers who disembarked from the ship last week, 40 showing signs of the coronavirus were taken to local hotels for further quarantine under medical supervision. These workers will remain in isolation until they are deemed fit to fly. According to Fuller, the crew still on board have all tested negative for COVID-19. Some crew members have claimed on Facebook, however, that they have not received their results from the most recent round of testing. The fact that dozens of crew members were still too unwell or infectious to fly after five weeks of self-isolation strongly suggests that the coronavirus still presents a substantial threat to the workers on board. Whether these recent cases have been contracted from asymptomatic carriers or contaminated surfaces on board, there is no guarantee that more infections will not develop while the ship is at sea.
‘False Dawn’ Recovery Haunts Virus Survivors Who Fall Sick Again – It had been over a month since Mirabai Nicholson-McKellar was infected with the coronavirus, and the 35-year-old filmmaker thought she was on her way to recovery. Then the shortness of breath came back, followed by chest pains. A visit to the emergency room and a second test for Covid-19 gave another positive result. Just three days earlier, she’d been cleared by health authorities in Australia’s New South Wales state, and was allowed to end her home quarantine after going 72 hours without symptoms. “When is this going to end? I think about that constantly,” she said of the twists and turns in her health. “Am I still contagious? How do I know if I’m not contagious?” Her experience adds to a growing number of reports of patients appearing to have a reactivation of symptoms, testing positive again, or even potentially being reinfected. Such incidents don’t align with the generally accepted understanding of how virus infections work and spread. This so-called false-dawn phenomenon is puzzling health experts as they try to come to grips with the mysterious pathogen that emerged only five months ago. Solving the puzzle will inform a broad range of challenges, from the development of an effective vaccine to how soon governments may be able to safely end lockdowns and allow normal life to resume. More immediately, the situation is taking a personal toll, making the journey of recovery a complex and frustrating ordeal for some of the more than 1 million survivors of the pandemic. So far, there hasn’t been enough research to conclude why symptoms seem to re-emerge in some people, and whether they experience reinfection or if the virus persists for weeks. One possibility is that Covid-19 causes blood clots that may cause potentially dangerous complications unless treated with anticoagulant medications.
Coronavirus Eliminated in New Zealand Following Government Response – Five weeks after launching an aggressive nationwide lockdown to combat the coronavirus pandemic – coupled with one of the most robust economic relief packages of any country – New Zealand’s government on Monday announced that the new coronavirus is currently “eliminated” in the nation.The country’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday that while cases are not at zero, new cases have been in the single digits for the past several days – an “incredible” statistic, said Ardern, as other countries face thousands of new cases per day.”We have done what very few countries have been able to do,” Ardern said last week as the country was preparing to move from a Level 4 restrictions to Level 3, allowing some businesses to reopen. “We have stopped a wave of devastation.”One new case was reported Monday, as well as four “probable cases” and one new death.”We’ve achieved our goal of elimination… That never meant zero but it does mean we know where our cases are coming from,” Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said.As the country reduces restrictions to Level 3, businesses that reopen will be required to maintain physical distancing rules. Schools will reopen with limited capacity, and workers will still be encouraged to work from home if they are able to. Events such as weddings and funerals will only be able to take place with up to 10 people in attendance, and public buildings such as museums, libraries, and gyms will remain shuttered for the time being.New Zealand has confirmed a total of 1,469 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, since the first case there was detected on February 28.In New Zealand, home to 4.8 million, the disease has infected about 30 in every 100,000 people and has killed 19 people – fewer than one in every 100,000 people.The numbers in the island nation contrast sharply with those in the U.S., where nearly one million people have been sickened – nearly 300 in every 100,000 – and more than 50,000 people have died.Ardern has been credited with enforcing a strict lockdown even before the disease had claimed any lives in New Zealand. Two weeks after the first case was reported, the prime minister ordered anyone entering the country to self-quarantine for 14 days. Most businesses shut down on March 23, when there were 102 cases and no deaths, and the country began enforcing Level 4 restrictons – forbidding people to leave home except for outdoor exercise nearby – on March 25.Ardern’s extreme measures were in line with the recommendations of top public health officials, including U.S. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, who said last month that the measures most effective at slowing the outbreak would likely be seen as “too drastic” by many.New Zealand has also been testing the public at one of the highest rates in the world, Ardern said Monday, administering nearly 124,000 tests in recent weeks with the capacity to complete 8,000 tests per day. The U.S. has increased its testing capacity in the past month, but public health experts say the severe lag in confronting the pandemic in the U.S. after the first case was reported there in January has made the disease difficult to contain.
Dozens Of Patients In Wuhan Have Developed ‘Chronic’ Coronavirus Infections – A few weeks ago, we reported on several Reddit threads where COVID-19 patients from around the world – many of them young men – shared their struggles with a virus that they just couldn’t seem to shake. Some patients who were six or seven weeks post-confirmation (meaning they probably had contracted the virus two months earlier, or possibly even longer) complained of symptoms coming back in waves, while others complained that they were still testing positive for the virus weeks after their symptoms disappeared. Though rare, these cases have alarmed researchers who fear that some patients might become chronic carriers of the virus. And the scientists leading China’s response to the outbreak are particularly concerned about dozens of apparently chronic patients in Hubei who still haven’t cleared the virus, even as the region – which was bolted shut during the outbreak crisis – slowly reopens to the outside world. According to Chinese business newswire Caixin, more than 30 patients in Hubei Province have seemingly recovered from COVID-19, but continue to test positive, said Jiao Yahui, an inspector at the National Health Commission, in an April 24 interview with the state broadcaster. Typically, patients infected with COVID-19 will test negative on nucleic acid throat swabs roughly 20 days after detection. However, for a small number of patients, throat swabs will produce positive tests for more than 40 days. Some patients are still producing positive swabs, despite being infected in the first wave of patients. Of course, the existence of patients who still test positive raises the question of whether they are still infectious. It’s certainly possible that these tests might be picking up errant pieces of genetic material leftover from the infection, but it’s also possible that the virus could have burrowed deep enough to become chronic, though, as scientists say, that’s not ‘typical’ behavior for a naturally occurring coronavirus. Hold that thought. Scientists say there’s “little possibility” that humans can be lifelong carriers of this virus. But it’s not impossible. Whatever the reality might be, infectious disease experts in China are recommending that these patients be kept in isolation in what we imagine has become a singularly hellish experience for these unfortunate patients. Whether this is evidence of chronic infection, or simply an extended process of “viral shedding”, the issue has perplexed some of China’s greatest virologists.
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