Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
The news posted last week for the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. The articles are more or less organized with general virus news and anecdotes first, then stories from around the US, followed by news from other countries around the globe. This week we have increased coverage of overseas hotspots, especially Brazil. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.
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Deaths and illness among youth raise concerns as schools plan to reopen — While schools and universities discuss plans to reopen, new warnings have emerged concerning the effects of the COVID-19 virus on youth. Several recent deaths of young students demonstrate the basic fact that, despite efforts by the media and politicians to downplay the dangers, the virus can pose a deadly threat to young people. On April 25, in Lancaster, Texas, 17-year-old Lancaster High School student Jameela Dirrean-Emoni Barber died from liver and blood clots after she tested positive for coronavirus. Reports indicate that she had no underlying health conditions. Another tragic example can be found at Wheeling High School in a northwestern suburb of Chicago. Sophomore Zach Leviton, who was just 16 years old, died after falling severely ill. After being put on a ventilator, Leviton died on April 13 at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois. Leviton initially tested negative for the virus; however, doctors found his symptoms to be characteristic of an early-stage coronavirus infection.The City University of New York (CUNY) has identified four faculty, 10 staff, and three students who have died from the virus. Furthermore, students, faculty, and staff have complained that university officials have not been forthcoming with information on CUNY’s coronavirus cases. Students have also raised criticism over the delay in CUNY’s response to the pandemic as well as its lack of financial support for students who have lost campus jobs. A student at Western Michigan University (WMU), 25-year-old Bassey Offiong, tried multiple times to get tested for the virus after showing COVID-19 symptoms. He was denied at every attempt. He died on March 29, spending the last week of his life on a ventilator. Offiong would have graduated from WMU and received his degree in chemical engineering just a month from the time of his passing. He appeared to not have any underlying health conditions.Another youth from Kalamazoo, Cornelius Frederick, contracted the virus and died at just 16 years old while staying at the foster care group home Lakeside Academy. . Frederick reportedly told staff, “I can’t breathe!” before passing out. He was transported to Bronson Methodist Hospital where he tested positive for COVID-19. Since May 4, nine staff members and 39 students also tested positive for the virus at Lakeside Academy.While it is true that the virus is significantly more lethal to older people, the rate of infection among youth is significantly higher than what was originally anticipated. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,nearly 40 percent of American COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized were under 55 – and 20 percent were between ages 20 and 44. And in rare cases, even children have died after falling ill with COVID-19.
‘Straight-Up Fire’ in His Veins: Teen Battles New Covid Syndrome NYT – When a sprinkling of a reddish rash appeared on Jack McMorrow’s hands in mid-April, his father figured the 14-year-old was overusing hand sanitizer – not a bad thing during a global pandemic. When Jack’s parents noticed that his eyes looked glossy, they attributed it to late nights of video games and TV. When he developed a stomachache and didn’t want dinner, “they thought it was because I ate too many cookies or whatever,” said Jack, a ninth grader in Woodside, Queens. But over the next 10 days, Jack felt increasingly unwell. His parents consulted his pediatricians in video appointments and took him to a weekend urgent care clinic. Then, one morning, he awoke unable to move. He had a tennis-ball-size lymph node, raging fever, racing heartbeat and dangerously low blood pressure. Pain deluged his body in “a throbbing, stinging rush,” he said. “You could feel it going through your veins and it was almost like someone injected you with straight-up fire,” he said. Jack, who was previously healthy, was hospitalized with heart failure that day, in a stark example of the newly discovered severe inflammatory syndrome linked to the coronavirus that has already been identified in about 200 children in the United States and Europe and killed several. The condition, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are calling Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, has shaken widespread confidence that children were largely spared from the pandemic. Instead of targeting lungs as the primary coronavirus infection does, it causes inflammation throughout the body and can cripple the heart. It has been compared to a rare childhood inflammatory illness called Kawasaki disease, but doctors have learned that the new syndrome affects the heart differently and erupts mostly in school-age children, rather than infants and toddlers. The syndrome often appears weeks after infection in children who did not experience first-phase coronavirus symptoms. At a Senate hearing last week, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a leader of the government’s coronavirus response, warned that because of the syndrome, “we’ve got to be careful that we are not cavalier and thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects.”
Placentas from COVID-19-positive pregnant women show injury — The placentas from 16 women who tested positive for COVID-19 while pregnant showed evidence of injury, according to pathological exams completed directly following birth, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. The type of injury seen in the placentas shows abnormal blood flow between the mothers and their babies in utero, pointing to a new complication of COVID-19. The findings, though early, could help inform how pregnant women should be clinically monitored during the pandemic. The study was published today (May 22) in the journal American Journal of Clinical Pathology. It is the largest study to examine the health of placentas in women who tested positive for COVID-19. “Most of these babies were delivered full-term after otherwise normal pregnancies, so you wouldn’t expect to find anything wrong with the placentas, but this virus appears to be inducing some injury in the placenta,” said senior author Dr. Jeffrey Goldstein, assistant professor of pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine pathologist. “It doesn’t appear to be inducing negative outcomes in live-born infants, based on our limited data, but it does validate the idea that women with COVID should be monitored more closely.” This increased monitoring might come in the form of non-stress tests, which examine how well the placenta is delivering oxygen, or growth ultrasounds, which measure if the baby is growing at a healthy rate, said co-author Dr. Emily Miller, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Feinberg and a Northwestern Medicine obstetrician. “Not to paint a scary picture, but these findings worry me,” Miller said. “I don’t want to draw sweeping conclusions from a small study, but this preliminary glimpse into how COVID-19 might cause changes in the placenta carries some pretty significant implications for the health of a pregnancy. We must discuss whether we should change how we monitor pregnant women right now.”
Coronavirus: A third of hospital patients develop dangerous blood clots – Up to 30% of patients who are seriously ill with coronavirus are developing dangerous blood clots, according to medical experts. They say the clots, also known as thrombosis, could be contributing to the number of people dying. Severe inflammation in the lungs – a natural response of the body to the virus – is behind their formation. Patients worldwide are being affected by many medical complications of the virus, some of which can be fatal. Back in March, as coronavirus was spreading across the globe, doctors started seeing far higher rates of clots in patients admitted to hospital than they would normally expect. And there have been other surprises, including the discovery of hundreds of micro-clots in the lungs of some patients. The virus has also increased cases of deep vein thrombosis – blood clots usually found in the leg – which can be life-threatening when fragments break off and move up the body into the lungs, blocking blood vessels. “With a huge outpouring of data over the past few weeks I think it has become apparent that thrombosis is a major problem,” says Roopen Arya, professor of thrombosis and haemostasis at King’s College Hospital, London. “Particularly in severely affected Covid patients in critical care, where some of the more recent studies show that nearly half the patients have pulmonary embolism or blood clot on the lungs.” He believes the number of critically ill coronavirus patients developing blood clots could be significantly higher than the published data in Europe of up to 30%.
Blood clotting abnormalities reveal COVID-19 patients at risk for thrombotic events -When researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, used a combination of two specific blood-clotting tests, they found critically ill patients infected with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) who were at high risk for developing renal failure, venous blood clots, and other complications associated with blood clots, such as stroke. Their study, which was one of the first to build on growing evidence that COVID-19-infected patients are highly predisposed to developing blood clots, linked blood clotting measurements with actual patient outcomes. The research team is now participating in a randomized clinical trial of a drug that breaks down blood clots in COVID-19-infected patients. “This is an early step on the road to discovering treatments to prevent some of the complications that come with this disease,” said Franklin Wright, MD, FACS, lead author of the research article and an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Their research is published as an “article in press” on the Journal of the American College of Surgeons website ahead of print. Patients who are critically ill regardless of cause can develop a condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). The blood of these patients initially forms many clots in small blood vessels. The body’s natural clotting factors can form too much clot or eventually not be able to effectively form any clot leading to issues of both excessive clotting and excessive bleeding. However, in patients with COVID-19 the clotting appears to be particularly severe and–as evidenced by case studies in China and elsewhere1–clots in COVID-19 patients do not appear to dissipate, explained Dr. Wright.
Plan to study nicotine patches as potential coronavirus treatment – Plans are being made to investigate the potential of nicotine patches to combat Covid-19 after the idea was raised by doctors at a hospital in Wales where the improvised treatment is being practised. France moved last week to prevent the stockpiling of nicotine products after its health minister took an interest in a French study that suggested smokers may be much less at risk of contracting the virus. However, doctors in Wales who published their own suggestions in January on the use of the stimulants in coronavirus treatment have been discussing the possibility of a formal trial. “We saw the pandemic coming from China and then the horrific stories from Italy, so we were doing our own research and looking at as many papers as we could,” said Jonathan Davies, a consultant trauma surgeon at Royal Glamorgan hospital, where physicians have been routinely giving out nicotine patches to patients with coronavirus and who had been smokers. The result was a short paper published in the British Medical Journal which stated that, at least in chronic smokers, the lung injuries in those infected with Covid-19 were being exacerbated by nicotine withdrawal. The addictive stimulant could interfere with the production of elements that led to inflammation, according to its authors. “Of course, everyone should stop smoking. If you are a smoker then you are at risk of all the secondary complications if the virus does take hold,” said Davies. But he suggested in such cases nicotine could be used as a supplement.
Areas that fail to social distance face 35 times more virus cases, study suggests -Areas that don’t practice social distancing face up to 35 times more potential cases of COVID-19 per capita than those that do, according to a study published Thursday in the health care journal Health Affairs.Researchers analyzed coronavirus cases in the U.S. from March 1 to April 27, saying their findings show “the potential danger of exponential spread in the absence of interventions.”More than 90 percent of the country underwent some type of social distancing order since March, the study found, though not all policies were as effective, depending on how lax enforcement was and how long they lasted.Social distancing policies that lasted 16 to 20 days reduced the infection rate by more than 9 percent, the study showed. Cases were reduced by 5.4 percent within the first five days of the policies, and that percentage grew the more days – up to three weeks – that they were in effect.Places with no social distancing orders were at a much higher risk for infection.“Holding the amount of voluntary social distancing constant, these results imply 10 times greater spread by April 27 without [shelter-in-place orders] … and more than 35 times greater spread without any of the four measures,” the researchers wrote in the fast-tracked article.The research comes as states begin a phased reopening starting this month and into the summer amid calls for caution from public health officials. Stay-at-home orders have put local governments in a tough place as sales tax revenue plummets and unemployment has reached record highs, with tens of millions of people filing jobless claims since March.
Six feet not far enough to stop virus transmission in light winds – Airborne transmission of viruses, like the virus causing COVID-19, is not well understood, but a good baseline for study is a deeper understanding of how particles travel through the air when people cough. In a paper published in Physics of Fluids, from AIP Publishing, Talib Dbouk and Dimitris Drikakis discovered that with even a slight breeze of 4 kph [2.5 mph], saliva travels 18 feet in 5 seconds. “The droplet cloud will affect both adults and children of different heights,” Drikakis said. “Shorter adults and children could be at higher risk if they are located within the trajectory of the traveling saliva droplets.”
Elderly covid-19 patients on ventilators usually do not survive, New York hospitals report – Most elderly covid-19 patients put on ventilators at two New York hospitals did not survive, according to a sweeping study published Tuesday that captured the brutal nature of this new disease and the many ways it attacks the body.The study, published in the Lancet, is broadly consistent with clinical findings from China and Europe, and confirmed that advanced age is the greatest risk factor for a severe outcome, particularly if accompanied by chronic underlying diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.The high mortality rate, especially among elderly patients with some underlying disease, stunned Max O’Donnell, the senior author of the study and a pulmonologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. “We had no idea how horrific this would be,” he said. “Definitely not just the flu.”The research focused on 257 critically ill adults, representing a little under one-quarter of the confirmed coronavirus patients admitted at the two hospitals in northern Manhattan between March 2 and April 1. The median age of critically ill patients was 62 years, and two-thirds of them were male.Of the critically ill patients studied, 39 percent had died by April 28, and 37 percent remained hospitalized at Milstein and Allen hospitals.No critically ill patients under the age of 30 died at the two hospitals, O’Donnell said, and only a small number of them had to be put on ventilators. But more than 80 percent of people over 80 who went on a ventilator did not survive, he said. That fact, he said, should be shared with elderly patients and their family members when trying to decide whether to use the invasive procedure to treat severe illness associated with covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Study Points To COVID-19 Lab Creation; Lead Author Suggests ‘Forced Selection’ Vs. Genetic Engineering – A study led by Flinders University vaccine researcher Nikolai Petrovsky in Australia reveals that SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, is optimized for penetration into human cells vs. animal cells – undermining the theory that it naturally evolved in animals before jumping to humans, according to LifeSiteNews‘ Matthew Cullinan Hoffman. Petrovsky says that the results, which are not peer-reviewed, suggest “a remarkable coincidence or a sign of human intervention.” The authors of the study, led by vaccine researcher Nikolai Petrovsky of Flinders University in Australia, used a version of the novel coronavirus collected in the earliest days of the outbreak and applied computer models to test its capacity to bind to certain cell receptor enzymes, called “ACE2,” that allow the virus to infect human and animal cells to varying degrees of efficacy.They tested the propensity of the COVID-19 virus’s spike protein, which it uses to enter cells, to bind to the human type of ACE2 as well as to many different animal versions of ACE2, and found that the novel coronavirus most powerfully binds with human ACE2, and with variously lesser degrees of effectiveness with animal versions of the receptor.According to the study’s authors, this implies that the virus that causes COVID-19 did not come from an animal intermediary, but became specialized for human cell penetration by living previously in human cells, quite possibly in a laboratory. – LifeSiteNews Typically, “a virus would be expected to have highest affinity for the receptor in its original host species, e.g. bat, with a lower initial binding affinity for the receptor of any new host, e.g. humans. However, in this case, the affinity of SARS-CoV-2 is higher for humans than for the putative original host species, bats, or for any potential intermediary host species,” wrote the authors. A “possibility which still cannot be excluded is that SARSCoV-2 was created by a recombination event that occurred inadvertently or consciously in a laboratory handling coronaviruses, with the new virus then accidentally released into the local human population,” they added.
Hydroxychloroquine drug touted by Trump linked to increased risk of death, study says – A study of 96,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients on six continents found that those who received an antimalarial drug promoted by President Trump as a “game changer” in the fight against the virus had a significantly higher risk of death compared with those who did not.People treated with hydroxychloroquine, or the closely related drug chloroquine, were also more likely to develop a type of irregular heart rhythm, or arrhythmia, that can lead to sudden cardiac death, it concluded.The study, published Friday in the medical journal Lancet is the largest analysis to date of the risks and benefits of treating covid-19 patients with antimalarial drugs. Like earlier smaller studies, it delivered disappointing news to a world eager for promising treatments for the novel coronavirus as the global death toll grows to more than 300,000. While doctors have refined how they treat the disease, they have yet to discover a magic bullet against a pathogen for which humans have no known immunity.“It’s one thing not to have benefit, but this shows distinct harm,” said Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. “If there was ever hope for this drug, this is the death of it.”David Maron, director of preventive cardiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said that “these findings provide absolutely no reason for optimism that these drugs might be useful in the prevention or treatment of covid-19.”President Trump stunned many doctors earlier this week when he said he was taking hydroxychloroquine “every day” – despite FDA warnings that the use of the drug should be limited to those in a hospital setting or in clinical trials. He has since said he is close to finishing his course of treatment and would stop taking the medication in “a day or two.”
Utah went all-in on an unproven Covid-19 treatment, then scrambled to course-correct – Even before President Trump started plugging chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as Covid-19 treatments, enthusiasm for the old malaria drugs was swelling in the state of Utah. The “stunning medications” led to “responses that are equivalent to Lazarus” – the Biblical figure brought back to life by Jesus – one physician said at an event at the state Capitol. The deputy director of the state health department, even as he acknowledged there was not “FDA-type of evidence” showing the drugs worked, said he was willing to put stock in case reports and “test tube evidence.” Propelled by that hype, as well as mounting fears of the oncoming pandemic, the state pursued a sweeping – and eyebrow-raising – policy that would have let pharmacies dispense the unproven medications to patients with Covid-19 without a prescription. Utah, which took perhaps the most aggressive strategy with the drugs of any state, also put in an order for $800,000 worth of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to build a stockpile, and considered buying millions of dollars more. The state did all of that without any rigorous evidence the drugs can help patients recover faster from Covid-19. Clinical trials that will answer that question are ongoing, but recent observational studies have cast doubt on an effect. And in the weeks since Utah’s efforts to promote and procure the drugs, the Food and Drug Administration has warned they should not be taken for Covid-19 outside a hospital or a clinical trial, citing “reports of serious heart rhythm problems.” Utah eventually abandoned its plans to make the drugs available without prescriptions and canceled its order.
America’s top coronavirus doctor warns vaccines could make Covid-19 worse – The United States’ top coronavirus doctor has warned prototype coronavirus vaccines could end up making Covid-19 patients get sicker if they contract the disease. White House immunologist Dr Anthony Fauci offered the warning while giving an update on efforts to develop vaccines at an online US Senate hearing on Tuesday. He said: ‘I must warn that there’s also the possibility of negative consequences, where certain vaccines can actually enhance the negative effect of the infection.’ Dr Fauci later explained that in rare cases people vaccinated against a condition could end up contracting the virus they thought they’d been protected against, and falling more seriously-ill with that disease as a result He said: ‘Do you get an enhancement effect (from the disease)? There have been a number of vaccines, when the vaccine induces a sub-optimal response and when the person gets exposed they have an enhanced pathogenesis (development) of the disease.’ He said such instances were very rare, and had only occurred with two previous vaccines developed for other viruses. Dr Fauci said the most important issue with any successful vaccine was its efficacy – ability to produce the desired result – in this case, the prevention of coronavirus infections. Explaining the key questions researchers face, Fauci continued: ‘Will (efficacy) be president or absence, and how durable will it be?’
COVID-19 is killing 20 times more people per week than flu does, new paper says – If there was any doubt that the new coronavirus isn’t just “a bad flu,” a new paper published (May 14) in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine lays that myth to rest. The study authors found that in the U.S. there were 20 times more deaths per week from COVID-19 than from the flu in the deadliest week of an average influenza season. .Ever since the new coronavirus was discovered in early January, people have compared it with the flu, pointing out that influenza causes tens of thousands of deaths every year in the U.S. alone. Indeed, during the current flu season, theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that there were up to 62,000 flu deaths in the U.S. from October 2019 through April 2020.At a glance, this may appear similar to the toll of COVID-19, which as of early May, had caused about 65,000 U.S. deaths. (As of Thursday, May 13, the number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. was more than 82,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.)But this doesn’t match what health care providers are seeing on the frontlines of the pandemic, particularly in hot zones (such as New York City), “where ventilators have been in short supply and many hospitals have been stretched beyond their limits,” the authors said.This comparison is flawed because the CDC estimates of flu deaths are just that – estimates rather than raw numbers. The CDC does not know the exact number of people who become sick with or die from the flu each year in the U.S. Rather, this number is estimated based on data collected on flu hospitalizations through surveillance in 13 states.On the other hand, reported COVID-19 deaths are actual counts of people who died from COVID-19, not estimates. In other words, comparing estimates of flu deaths with raw counts of COVID-19 deaths is like comparing “apples to oranges,” the authors said.So for the new study, the researchers looked at actual counts of flu deaths per week, and compared those with counts of COVID-19 deaths.
Can You Get Covid-19 Twice? – WSJ –More than 160 South Koreans tested positive a second time for the novel coronavirus last month, weeks after being discharged from medical supervision. Some symptom-free Americans have been barred from donating their blood plasma to help treat others because they are still testing positive.The revelations are generating concern that people who have had Covid-19 are getting infected anew – something scientists say current evidence doesn’t support.Most scientists say that people who have had Covid-19 gain some immunity to the virus that causes it. What they don’t know is whether that protection lasts a few months, a few years or a lifetime.The immune system wards off infections by producing antibodies that fight invaders. A range of hereditary and environmental factors, including diet and sleep patterns, typically affect the strength and longevity of those defenses.Immunity also depends on the pathogen. For example, infection by the virus that causes measles confers lifelong immunity. Others, like the influenza virus, can mutate so rapidly that protective antibodies might not recognize them during a reinfection. The novel coronavirus mutates more slowly than the influenza virus. That gives researchers hope that any natural immunity, or vaccine, would offer more lasting protection. Even if someone gets sick again, researchers believe a second infection might be milder than the first. Korean doctors involved in a continuing government review believe that those patients likely harbored low levels of the virus that diagnostic polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests failed to pick up. In later stages of the disease, the virus settles into the lungs where it can elude detection. The virus, they say, hadn’t been fully cleared from the body.
Coronavirus: When Will the Second Wave Hit? — First it looked like we were in for a very long haul under lockdown measures, perhaps until the end of the summer holidays. That was until about two weeks ago. Then, all of a sudden, the weather changed – atmospherically and metaphorically, and perhaps freakishly so.Restrictions are being lifted in Germany, Spain, Greece and elsewhere.Even the United Kingdom, which has seen some of the highest numbers of infections and deaths from COVID-19 in Europe, is thinking about “reopening the economy,” as several top officials have urged in recent days.Earlier this month, India extended its lockdown for another two weeks amid growing concerns that if nations ease restrictions too soon, the world may well see a second wave of infections.A second wave is more or less inevitable. “This virus may just become another endemic virus in our communities,” said Dr. Mike Ryan of the World Health Organization at a press conference streamed live on May 13. “This virus may never go away.”Ryan, the executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, pointed out that other viruses like HIV haven’t gone away either. Instead, we’ve developed drugs to mitigate its affects and we’ve learned to live with it. Only the fewest of deadly viruses, such as smallpox, have ever been eradicated. The rest live on in the community. Some, like tuberculosis, make a comeback, and history shows that a second wave of a pandemic can be worse than the first. This was the case with the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which continued in waves until letting up in 1920.
Why do some COVID-19 patients infect many others, whereas most don’t spread the virus at all? – When 61 people met for a choir practice in a church in Mount Vernon, Washington, on 10 March, everything seemed normal. But one of them had been suffering for 3 days from what felt like a cold – and turned out to be COVID-19. In the following weeks, 53 choir members got sick, three were hospitalized, and two died, according to a 12 May report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that meticulously reconstructed the tragedy. Many similar “superspreading events” have occurred in the COVID-19 pandemic. A database by Gwenan Knight and colleagues at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) lists an outbreak in a dormitory for migrant workers in Singapore linked to almost 800 cases; 80 infections tied to live music venues in Osaka, Japan; and a cluster of 65 cases resulting from Zumba classes in South Korea. Clusters have also occurred aboard ships and at nursing homes, meatpacking plants, ski resorts, churches, restaurants, hospitals, and prisons. Sometimes a single person infects dozens of people, whereas other clusters unfold across several generations of spread, in multiple venues. Other infectious diseases also spread in clusters, and with close to 5 million reported COVID-19 cases worldwide, some big outbreaks were to be expected. But SARS-CoV-2, like two of its cousins, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), seems especially prone to attacking groups of tightly connected people while sparing others. “If you can predict what circumstances are giving rise to these events, the math shows you can really, very quickly curtail the ability of the disease to spread,” says Jamie Lloyd-Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied the spread of many pathogens. But superspreading events are ill-understood and difficult to study, and the findings can lead to heartbreak and fear of stigma in patients who touch them off. Most of the discussion around the spread of SARS-CoV-2 has concentrated on the average number of new infections caused by each patient. Without social distancing, this reproduction number (R) is about three. But in real life, some people infect many others and others don’t spread the disease at all. In fact, the latter is the norm, Lloyd-Smith says: “Most people do not transmit.” That’s why in addition to R, scientists use a value called the dispersion factor (k), which describes how much a disease clusters. The lower k is, the more transmission comes from a small number of people. In a seminal 2005 Nature paper, Lloyd-Smith and co-authors estimated that SARS – in which superspreading played a major role – had a k of 0.16. The estimated k for MERS, which emerged in 2012, is about 0.25. In the flu pandemic of 1918, in contrast, the value was about one, indicating that clusters played less of a role.
FDA suspends Gates-backed at-home COVID-19 testing program – (Reuters) – An at-home coronavirus testing project in Seattle backed in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said on Saturday it was working with U.S. regulators to resume the program after being suspended by the Food and Drug Administration. The Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN), which aims to monitor the spread of the novel coronavirus in the region, had said it was suspending its testing of patient samples collected at home after the Food and Drug Administration tightened guidelines to require emergency approval first. “The FDA has not raised any concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of SCAN’s test, but we have been asked to pause testing until we receive that additional authorization,” SCAN said. The Gates Foundation in March said it was providing technical assistance for SCAN, which had been approved by regulators in Washington state, one of the first U.S. states to be hit hard by the outbreak. Bill Gates has also privately funded SCAN, according to the foundation. On Thursday, SCAN in a statement said it has been in talks with the FDA since March 1 and initiated its request for emergency use authorization (EUA) on March 23, submitting data on April 13. “We have been notified that a separate federal emergency use authorization is required to return results for self-collected tests,” SCAN said. Representatives for the Food and Drug Administration did not have an immediate comment on SCAN’s status. Representatives of King County Health Department referred questions to SCAN. SCAN said it did not have an update on specific timing for when testing would restart.
Florida’s scientist was fired for refusing to ‘manipulate’ COVID-19 data – The scientist who created Florida’s COVID-19 data portal wasn’t just removed from her position on May 5, she was fired on Monday by the Department of Health, she said, for refusing to manipulate data. Rebekah Jones said in an email to the USA TODAY Network that she single-handedly created two applications in two languages, four dashboards, six unique maps with layers of data functionality for 32 variables covering a half a million lines of data. Her objective was to create a way for Floridians and researchers to see what the COVID-19 situation was in real time.Then, she was dismissed.”I worked on it alone, sixteen hours a day for two months, most of which I was never paid for, and now that this has happened I’ll probably never get paid for,” she wrote in an email, confirming that she had not just been reassigned on May 5, but fired from her job as Geographic Information Systems manager for the Florida Department of Health. After USA TODAY Network first reported Jones’ removal from her position in charge of the Florida COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard she created, she confirmed, as reported by CBS-12 in West Palm Beach that she was fired because she was ordered to censor some data, but refused to “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.”
Texas reports largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases – The Texas Department of Health reported Saturday that there are more than 47,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the state, with over 1,800 new cases reported Saturday, as the state ramps up testing in areas that it has declared high risk. It’s the largest single-day increase in confirmed cases in Texas since the pandemic began.There were 33 additional deaths reported Saturday, bringing the total number of fatalities in the Lone Star State to 1,305. Meanwhile, Texas is moving forward with plans to reopen. On Monday, gyms can open with 25% capacity, and they must space equipment and provide cleaning products throughout the gym, CBS Houston affiliate KHOU-TV reports. Nonessential manufacturing and work offices can reopen with 25% capacity as well. Currently, the largest number of cases have been reported in the state’s two largest counties: Dallas County and Harris County, which includes the city of Houston. Potter County, which includes the city of Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle, accounts for more than 2,100 of the state’s cases. There are more than 600 confirmed cases in neighboring Randall County. More than 700 cases were reported Friday in the Amarillo region, which includes Potter County and Randall County, where meatpacking plants have been targeted for increased testing. Governor Greg Abbott said in a press release Saturday that on May 4, he had deployed a Surge Response Team to Amarillo consisting of medical workers and the Texas National Guard to test the meatpacking facilities. Abbott noted that as the Lone Star State bolsters its testing ability, there will be an increase in positive tests, especially as results come in from high-risk facilities such as meatpacking plants, nursing homes and jails. According to Abbott, there are 516 hospital beds available in the Amarillo region and 236 surge beds available. There are 110 ventilators available, with the capacity to send more to the region.
570 Workers Test Positive For COVID At Tyson Plant In North Carolina – Tyson Foods, Inc. is reporting a significant outbreak of COVID-19 at its Wilkesboro, North Carolina poultry plant. It appears the meat processing crisis is far from over, despite President Trump declaring an executive order weeks ago to reopen closed meat processing plants. Of the 2,244 workers and contractors at Wilkesboro facility who were recently tested, 570 tested positive for the virus, which equates to about 25% of the staff is infected. Many of the workers “did not show any symptoms,” Tyson says. Workers who tested positive were immediately sent home with paid leave and will return to work once they have met specific criteria laid out by both the CDC and Tyson. The Wilkesboro facility is among 30 meat processing plants where Tyson has distributed “advanced testing capabilities and enhanced care options on-site to team members in partnership with MATRIX MEDICAL.” “We are working closely with local health departments to protect our team members and their families, and to help manage the spread of the virus in our communities,” said Tom Brower, Senior Vice President of Health and Safety for Tyson Foods. “We are using the most up-to-date data and resources to support our team members, and we are committed to ensuring they feel safe and secure when they come to work.” Earlier this month, we described how meat processing plants are perfect environments for COVID-19 to thrive. Here are some of the most recent plants to shutter operations due to virus-related issues.
Nurse says patients attend ‘coronavirus parties’ to get sick –A North Carolina nurse said she’s treating patients who have attended “coronavirus parties” in an attempt to catch the deadly bug and hopefully develop immunity. “Over the last few days, we have heard from a lot of patients and the community that they’re unafraid of getting the virus,” Yolanda Enrich, a nurse practitioner at Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center, told an NBC affiliate. “People are actually out and about trying to get the virus, so attending gatherings, parties trying to maximize their chances of exposure.” Ernich said younger patients have told health care workers they’re hoping to develop antibodies so they no longer have to take precautions while they’re out in public. But health experts have not yet determined whether coronavirus antibodies actually deliver immunity. “We’re really concerned about this trend,” Enrich said. “They can spread the virus around the community and hurt our vulnerable populations that will have serious health implications.” Gov. Roy Cooper and state health officials are sounding the alarm on the idiotic concept. “You can easily kill someone you love,” Cooper said at a news conference this week, adding that the sickening soirees are “completely irresponsible and absolutely unacceptable.” Dr. Mandy Cohen, secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services, said more cases translate to more risk for vulnerable residents. “There is no circumstance under which we want people to actively pursue getting COVID-19,” Cohen said. “The reason we’re working so hard collectively to keep virus spread low is the fact that when there is more virus in our community, it not only impacts those who have it, but particularly those who are at high risk of getting severe reactions to disease.”
COVID-19 now spreading fastest in small, rural counties – The coronavirus pandemic is spreading out from urban centers and increasingly infecting residents in small rural counties, even as some of those areas begin to loosen lockdown requirements aimed at stopping its spread.A new analysis shows nearly three-quarters of Americans live in counties where the virus is now spreading widely. Another 200 counties have seen significant growth in infection trends in the last week, making them high-prevalence counties – areas where the virus has infected at least one in a thousand people. Like ripples in a pond, the virus is radiating out from its epicenters in large cities. An outbreak that started in New York City spread first to New Jersey and Connecticut, then south to Philadelphia, and now to upstate counties in New York like Hamilton and Essex and smaller Pennsylvania counties like Lycoming and Wyoming.What began as an outbreak in New Orleans has spread across the Deep South, recently arriving in northeast Arkansas, southwest Tennessee and much of Alabama. Hot spots in Detroit and its suburbs are migrating west to the shores of Lake Michigan.“Most of these counties are small rural counties,” said William Frey, the Brookings Institution demographer who conducted the analysis. “Very very few are what you would call inner city counties or inner suburb counties.”At the same time rural areas are beginning to see their first real flare-ups of coronavirus, case curves are bending down in some of the areas that were the first to be hit. The number of cases in states like Iowa, Arkansas, Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia are still substantially lower than early epicenters like New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey, but they are growing at a faster rate.By the end of March, 83 percent of counties where the coronavirus was highly prevalent were in the Northeast. But for the last five consecutive weeks, the majority of counties newly falling into the highly prevalent category have been in Southern and Western states. This week, Alabama, Texas and North Carolina have all experienced their highest numbers of confirmed cases.
Navajo Nation Has Highest Covid-19 Infection Rate in the U.S. – The Navajo Nation, which is spread out through the American Southwest mostly in Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, now has the highest per capita Covid-19 infection rate in the country, as CNN reported.The Navajo Nation’s alarming surge in cases is another example of an underserved and historically marginalized minority population being particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic.As CNN reported, the Navajo Nation had a reported population of 173,667 on the 2010 census. With 4,002 cases, the Native American territory now has 2,304.41 cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 people, overtaking New York has the most infected area per capita.New York state now has a rate of 1,806 cases per 100,000 and New Jersey is at 1,668 cases per 100,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The Navajo Nation already has high risk factors of comorbidities, including diabetes, lung disease, high-blood pressure, hypertension and heart disease. There’s also a lack of running water, medical infrastructure, internet access, information and adequate housing, according to The Washington Post.Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez told The Washington Post last week that the Nation had not “one cent” of the $8 billion that was allocated to Native American communities as part of the CARES Act passed in Washington on March 18.The surge in cases in the Navajo Nation has overwhelmed rural hospitals that are ill-equipped to deal with the novel coronavirus. Near Gallup, New Mexico, there is only one hospital within 110 miles of the town center. Now, the hospital’s eight intensive care beds are all full, meaning coronavirus patients with severe breathing problems are sent away from both the facility and the adjacent Gallup Indian Medical Center, which attends exclusively to the Native American community, according to The Associated Press. Only five of 12 Indian Health Services facilities in the Navajo Nation are tracking recovered coronavirus cases, meaning the number of infected patients is probably higher than what is reported. The Department of Health is now asking all facilities to keep an accurate count of recovered cases, according to the Navajo Times. So far, 24,886 Covid-19 tests have been administered with 18,380 negative results.
Hospitals overwhelmed in California and Alabama as national death toll approaches 100,000 – Hospitals in Montgomery, Alabama and El Centro, California have been forced to restrict admission of new coronavirus patients after caseloads of COVID-19 spiked during the week. The situation in both cities developed as the number of confirmed cases in the US passed 1.6 million, and the death toll approached 100,000. The situation in both cities was summed up by Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed, who said yesterday at a press conference, “Right now, if you are from Montgomery and you need an ICU bed, you are in trouble.” Of the state capital’s four regional hospitals, one is short three ICU beds, two have no available ICU beds, and one has just a single ICU bed remaining. Excess patients are being transferred to Birmingham, a trip for those infected of more than an hour. Reed also warned that the hospitals are “at a capacity that is not sustainable,” and that, “Our health care system is maxed out.” In El Centro, the increased caseload came from both sides of the US-Mexico border in the wake of relaxed physical distancing rules enacted two weeks ago. According to the CEO of the El Centro Regional Medical Center, Dr. Adolphe Edward, the surge is largely from US citizens who live in Mexicali, a border town in Mexico with a population of 690,000, who were turned away from Mexican hospitals as a result of rising coronavirus infections there. More than two dozen patients had to be transferred to hospitals in San Diego and other nearby cities, Reuters reports. This reality did not stop President Donald Trump from declaring on Friday, “I am identifying houses of worship, churches, synagogues and mosques, as essential places that provide essential services,” and demanding that “governors … allow our churches and places of worship to open right now.” Trump’s comments follow his remarks Thursday that the country’s reopening will not be stopped even if the pandemic regains the momentum it had in the previous two months. “Whether it’s an ember or a flame, we’re going to put it out. But we’re not closing our country.” This campaign has added fuel to the record rise of the stock market since its collapse in March, at the expense of tens of thousands of lives and tens of millions of livelihoods. The spike in cases in such divergent areas of the country is another indication that, contrary to official policy, the spread of the coronavirus pandemic is not slowing but increasing. States including Texas, Florida and Louisiana have joined Alabama and California in seeing an increase of new COVID-19 cases in recent days.
“We’ve Never Seen Numbers Like This” – Trauma Doc Sees Post-Lockdown Suicide Wave Starting — We suggested, at the beginning of April, that a “suicide wave” was imminent considering the economic devastation sparked by COVID-19 lockdowns. In the last nine weeks, 38.6 million Americans have lost their jobs and were thrown into instant poverty. Many were already skating on thin financial ice even before the pandemic, and now they’ve fallen through, drowning in insurmountable debts, no savings, and limited lifelines. The first signs of a suicide wave could be originating in California. ABC7 News reports doctors and nurses at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, are reporting deaths by suicide far exceed COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic. The hospital’s top trauma doctor, Dr. Mike deBoisblanc, told ABC7 that mental health has become a major problem during the shelter-in-place order. “Personally I think it’s time,” said deBoisblanc. “I think, originally, this (the shelter-in-place order) was put in place to flatten the curve and to make sure hospitals have the resources to take care of COVID patients. We have the current resources to do that and our other community health is suffering.” DeBoisblanc said the numbers are unprecedented: “We’ve never seen numbers like this, in such a short period of time,” he said. “I mean we’ve seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”Kacey Hansen, a trauma nurse at the hospital for over three decades, said the volume of suicide attempts has dramatically increased during the lockdowns, noting the pandemic has stretched resources, which means there are fewer tools to save as many patients as usual.“What I have seen recently, I have never seen before,” Hansen said. “I have never seen so much intentional injury.”As we’ve noted in the past, hospital systems do not let doctors and nurses speak out about internal affairs and or what’s happening in the community unless cleared by officials. It appears the outreach of hospital staff to the local news outlet is a move to address the mental health public crisis sparked by lockdowns in the Bay Area.
US Coronavirus Cases Pass 1.5 Million As Deaths Top 90k; Brazil Overtakes UK With World’s 3rd-Largest Outbreak -Just days after overtaking Italy and Spain, Brazil has overtaken the UK as the world’s third-largest COVID-19 hotspot, with ~254,000 cases reported. The outbreak in Latin America’s largest economy now accounts for ~13% of new cases reported globally on any given day, making it the world’s fastest growing outbreak, even surpassing russia.#Brazil is now the world’s fastest-growing coronavirus hotspot, accounting for 13% of all new cases globally in the past week. Just days after it overtook Italy & Spain in total number of cases, Brazil is poised to claim the No. 3 spot from UK. https://t.co/aRIUMRBy9T pic.twitter.com/hGonBjM7jT Meanwhile, in the US, the number of cases reported passed 1.5 million – with 1,504,386 according to JHU as of 630pmET – while the death toll has passed 90k, with 90,194 deaths reported.And in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state could reopen even more businesses over the next few weeks during his daily press briefing. Here’s more on that courtesy of the Guardian.Haircuts, in-person retail shopping, sporting events and religious services could be a reality again in some California counties in just the next few weeks, governor Gavin Newsom said Monday.Newsom provided an optimistic outlook for the state in his daily briefing, where he modified the criteria that each of California’s 58 counties must meet to reopen and join the state in phase two of coronavirus containment.“We are looking forward in the next few weeks to a number of significant milestones,” he said. “We expect if we hold the rate of transmissions, we hold the positivity rate down and continue to do justice to the number of hospitalizations, that we will be making announcements statewide.”
US Deaths Projected To Triple By Year-End Regardless Of Social Distancing- Study -While coronavirus projections have ranged from ‘just a flu’ levels to a ludicrous two million Americans dead, a new study from the University of Washington’s School of Pharmacy has concluded that the number of Americans who will die after contracting the novel coronavirus will more than triple by year-end, even if current social distancing habits are maintained for months to come. “COVID-19 infection is deadlier than flu – we can put that debate to rest,” said Anirban Basu, University of Washington health economist who authored the study which found that based on the infection fatality rate, 1.3% of those who show symptoms of COVID-19 die, which makes it 13x more deadly than a bad influenza season. Of note, the infection fatality rate (IFR) is different than the naturally higher case fatality rate (CFR), in that it measures outcomes for those assumed to have contracted the virus (IFR), vs. only counting deaths divided by cases confirmed via nucleic acid testing. Skewing the results of course are vast numbers of people who have never been tested because their symptoms were mild – those most likely to recover quickly and completely. If the infection fatality rate is accurate, and if the coronavirus continues spreading at current rates even before most states open their economies and relax social distancing restrictions, COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, could claim between 350,000 and 1.2 million American lives by the end of this year, Basu found. –The Hill “This is a staggering number, which can only be brought down with sound public health measures,” said Basu in a press release announcing the study, which tracked case counts and outcomes in 116 counties across 33 states in order to estimate the infection fatality rate – which widely varies across county and state lines. Basu also noted that the IFR is a dynamic figure by nature which is subject to revision. The World Health Organization had previously estimated the infection fatality rate as high as 3.4%, however other estimates have pegged it as low as half a percentage point, which would still make it deadlier than any flu pandemic in the last 100 years, according to the report. According to the report, if the coronavirus spreads as widely as a typical flu – which infects around 10% of the US population every year, nearly 500,000 Americans would die of the coronavirus at a 1.3% IFR
Up to 20% of hospital patients with Covid-19 caught it at hospital –Up to a fifth of patients with Covid-19 in several hospitals contracted the disease over the course of the pandemic while already being treated there for another illness, NHS bosses have told senior doctors and nurses. Some of the infections were passed on by hospital staff who were unaware they had the virus and were displaying no symptoms, while patients with coronavirus were responsible for the others. The figures represent NHS England’s first estimate of the size of the problem of hospital-acquired Covid-19, which Boris Johnson last week said was causing an “epidemic” of deaths. In a national briefing last month on infection control and Covid-19, NHS England told the medical directors and chief nurses of all acute hospitals in England that it had found that 10%-20% of people in hospital with the disease had got it while they were inpatients. Senior figures at several NHS trusts have confirmed to the Guardian that a senior official at NHS England said in the briefing, held by telephone conference in late April, that the rate of hospital-acquired Covid-19 infections was running at 10% to 20% and that asymptomatic staff had caused some of the cases. Senior doctors and hospital managers say that doctors, nurses and other staff have inadvertently passed on the virus to patients because they did not have adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) or could not get tested for the virus. Doctors say that hospital-acquired Covid-19 is a significant problem and that patients have died after becoming infected that way. One surgeon, who did not want to be named, said: “Multiple patients my department treated who were inpatients pre lockdown got the bug and died. Obviously the timeline supports that they acquired it from staff and other patients.”
NHS management said elderly would “have to die” in care homes – Devastating evidence has come to light confirming that the Johnson government’s murderous policies have led to the deaths of thousands of care home residents. Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows that around 12,000 people have died in the UK’s care homes. The real figure is far higher – at least 20,000 according to the Financial Times and the Times. Researchers at the London School of Economics’ (LSE) Care Policy and Evaluation Centre concluded that 22,000 care home residents in England and Wales may have died as a direct or indirect result of COVID-19. The LSE found that ONS data on care home deaths directly attributed to the virus significantly underestimated the impact of the pandemic, accounting for four out of 10 (41.6 percent) of the “excess deaths” in care settings recorded in recent weeks in England and Wales. It states, “Calculating total excess mortality in care homes since 28 December and adjusting this by the assumption that 15 percent of care home residents die in hospital, suggests that by 1 May there had been in excess of 22,000 deaths of care home residents during the COVID-19 pandemic – 54 percent of all excess mortality – in England and Wales.” The government is desperate to cover-up the scale of its crimes. Last Friday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock declared that the government had “tried to throw a protective ring around” care homes “right from the start” of the outbreak. In truth, the government turned the UK’s 20,000 care homes – housing over 400,000 elderly and vulnerable people – into killing fields. Among the most heinous crimes of the Tories was the directive from NHS England in March to clear thousands of people out of hospital beds, with many sent to their death beds in care homes. The NHS, de-staffed and brought to its knees by tens of billions in budget cuts over the previous decades, feared that it would be unable to cope with an influx of coronavirus patients. In a bid to ensure there would be no photos and footage of COVID-19 patients dying in hospital corridors, as in Italy, thousands of elderly people were booted out of hospital, many without even being tested to see if they were infected. In a letter to the Sunday Times this week, the owner of a private care home “providing 500 beds in the southwest of England” revealed, “On March 17, Sir Simon Stevens, the NHS chief executive, said hospitals had to get 90,000 beds cleared, so they needed to get 30,000 people out. So, they sent patients with no tests into care homes. They said: We don’t need tests – you’ve just got to take them.” The letter from Stevens to all NHS hospitals demanded they “Urgently discharge all hospital in patients who are medically fit to leave.” The owner added, “Well, I’ve now got two homes with COVID-19. We can trace it. In both homes, it came from residents bringing the virus from hospital. “The government is boasting how it did so well in protecting the NHS, but the reality is deaths in care homes.”
Is Covid-19 a nosocomial infection? – By: Izabella Kaminska – FT Alphaville has, like many others, been questioning the often confusing and sometimes contradictory approach the UK government has been taking to battling coronavirus. We had hoped that perhaps the government knew something we didn’t, which might explain their nonsensical approach. Recently released minutes of the government’s SAGE scientific advisory meetings suggest otherwise. It may be that the government’s contradictory approach is more easily explained by its desire to be everything to all people so as to maintain its popularity and electability: both appealing to the utterly petrified, who want lockdown to continue for as long as possible, but also to sceptics who want to keep the economy going to ensure the cure doesn’t become worse than the disease and are prepared to take some risks.The care home crisis, however, has been hard to defend, whatever one’s stance on lockdown is. For lockdown sceptics, it has undermined the notion that a herd immunity plan was secretly being pursued regardless of the government’s insistence on the contrary. Such a strategy, if it were following the same lines as the the government’s pandemic flu plan from 2011, would have focused on letting the disease rip among the resistant population while protecting the vulnerable at all costs (ie, shielding). Its infiltration into care homes seems to suggest the government did the exact opposite thing.For lockdown enthusiasts, meanwhile, it confirms that the government did not take the action needed to protect the vulnerable early enough, and that it should therefore be heavily criticised. And yet, some evidence is emerging that the spread of the disease in both care homes and hospitals may be a critical factor in its morbidity and virulence. As Toby Young, a dedicated sceptic, has pointed out on his Lockdown Sceptics blog, SAGEmeeting minutes from March 20, just before the lockdown (meeting no. 18) reference the fact that Covid-19 may be something known as a nosocomial disease. This is a category of disease that spreads predominantly within hospitals (and can thus pass into care homes because the elderly visit hospitals a lot), the most famous of which is probably MRSA. Another hat tip to Toby Young for drawing our attention to this report from the European centre for disease prevention and control, which offers comparative statistics on care home deaths across Europe. As the report notes, in the UK care home deaths represent 21 per cent of total deaths. Compare and contrast that with Sweden, which saw care home deaths represent 45 per cent of total deaths, and Spain, which saw care homes represent 66 per cent (the worst in Europe), Belgium 51 per cent and Norway with 61 per cent. Of course, the above is caveated by the fact that it’s generally hard to compare and contrast data between European countries. Not only are reporting standards different and subject to different time lags but what does and doesn’t qualify as a care home is presumably also variable. All that said, it does appear that the trends around deaths in care homes are curious and deserve further research.
Spike in Kawasaki-like disease linked to coronavirus in France and Italy, one child dies – French media reported on Friday that a nine-year-old boy in the city of Marseille died a week ago of a multi-system inflammatory disease that medical researchers have recently linked to the coronavirus pandemic. The emerging condition produces symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and affects children. It has seen a jump in incidence since the onset of the pandemic, and most or all of the children who have presented symptoms of the disorder are believed to have tested positive for the coronavirus. The child was admitted to the North Marseille urgent pediatric ward on May 2 with a rash but was sent home after doctors diagnosed him with scarlet fever. Later that evening, his health deteriorated rapidly and he was transported back to the emergency care, where doctors identified his symptoms with the rare Kawasaki-like syndrome. On May 8, he died in the hospital after a heart attack. According to the French national health service, the boy suffered a preexisting comorbidity in some form of neurodevelopmental condition, though it is unclear how this affected his response to the disease. He tested positive for the coronavirus though he had not displayed any symptoms of it. The child has become the fourth death from the condition. A five-year-old and seven-year-old have died in the US and a fourteen-year-old in the UK. . The precise nature of the connection between the condition and the coronavirus is yet to be determined. On Friday, the World Health Organization published an international call for researchers to study the connection between the coronavirus and the newly-named multisystem inflammatory disorder in children and adolescents. Symptoms include a rash, hypotension or shock, vomiting or diarrhea and abnormalities in the heart. The report notes that: “reports from Europe and North America have described clusters of children and adolescents requiring admission to intensive care units with a multisystem inflammatory condition with some features similar to those of Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome. Case reports and small series have described a presentation of acute illness accompanied by a hyper-inflammatory syndrome, leading to multi-organ failure and shock. “It is essential to characterize this syndrome and its risk factors, to understand causality, and describe treatment interventions. It is not yet clear the full spectrum of disease, and whether the geographical distribution in Europe and North America reflects a true pattern, or if the condition has simply not been recognized elsewhere.” Most of the children who have presented symptoms of the disorder have also tested positive for coronavirus, either from directly from nasal swabs or via antibody tests. There is believed to be a delay of four to six weeks from the point of infection with coronavirus and the onset of symptoms of the recently-discovered condition, including in cases of asymptomatic coronavirus patients.(For a more detailed explanation of the disorder, see: “ Kawasaki-like disease afflicting young children and teens after infection with SARS-CoV-2 “)
Bizarre EU-Funded Comic Book Predicted Pandemic, With Globalists As Saviours (see comic panels) A strange comic book that was commissioned for publication by the European Union in 2012 eerily predicted almost exactly what has unfolded with the Covid-19 global pandemic. However, in this propaganda laced presentation of the outbreak, unelected globalist bureaucrats save the planet.The comic book, titled ‘Infected’, was a production of the European Commission’s international cooperation and development arm. It was not intended for widespread public consumption, but instead to be distributed inside EU institutions. Only a few hundred of the comic books were made.The EU’s description of the strange publication states that “While the story may be fictional, it is nevertheless intertwined with some factual information.”The graphic novel depicts scientists inside a lab in China experimenting with deadly pathogens:A wannabe hero time travels from the future, alerting authorities to the coming pandemic, and presents an antidote, before quickly becoming the target of opportunists who want to steal the cure and sell it to drug companies: The story features the transmission of a novel virus from animals to humans in a crowded wet market: “Indeed, imagine if you were infected in this market by a new contagious agent.” says the UN’s chief advisor on contagious diseases, adding “You probably wouldn’t even realise it until the end of the incubation period.” The publication suggests that air travel would exacerbate the spread of the disease, with the character adding that “You’d have headed back to Europe, the US, Latin America, or Australia as planned via an international airport.” The cartoon depicts the failure of a global health organisation to act quickly enough to stop a pandemic: It also predicts draconian safety measures, including social distancing, which make everyday life “totally unbearable”:
Coronavirus: Russia reports record daily jump in deaths – Russia reported 150 additional fatalities that were related to the coronavirus in the last 24 hours – a record daily jump that brought the country’s death toll to 3,249, according to a report by Reuters. The number of confirmed cases in Russia rose by 8,894 in the last day to a total of 326,448, reported Reuters, citing the country’s coronavirus crisis response center. Russia’s total cases remained the second-highest globally behind the U.S., and some experts have questioned its relatively low death rate from the virus. President Donald Trump said “we are not closing our country” if the U.S. is hit by a second wave of coronavirus infections. “People say that’s a very distinct possibility, it’s standard,” Trump said when he was asked about a second wave while touring the Ford factory in Michigan.”We are going to put out the fires. We’re not going to close the country,” Trump said. “We can put out the fires. Whether it is an ember or a flame, we are going to put it out. But we are not closing our country.” Confirmed coronavirus cases around the world passed 5 million early Thursday as infections continue to accelerate in the Americas. The U.S. alone accounts for 1.5 million cases of the virus and more than 90,000 deaths of the global death toll. In China, where the virus outbreak was first detected late last year, government officials said there will be no official growth targets set for this year due to the uncertainties of the pandemic. Meanwhile, Japan’s central bank outlined details for a new scheme aimed at boosting lending to small and medium-sized businesses who are struggling with the economic fallout.
- Global cases: More than 5.1 million
- Global deaths: At least 333,323
- Countries with the most cases: United States (more than 1.5 million), Russia (326,448), Brazil (310,087), United Kingdom (252,246), Spain (233,037)
More easing in Europe but virus hits hard in S. America, Africa – Restaurants and churches will reopen in Italy on Monday as part of a fresh wave of lockdown easing in Europe, but rising coronavirus death tolls in Brazil, South Africa and other parts of the world showed the worst is still to come in many countries. The relaxation of curbs in some places comes as governments around the world struggle to repair the vast economic damage unleashed by the pandemic, with Japan the latest to slump into a recession and the Fed warning of a severe US downturn as the global infection count topped 4.7 million. But the World Health Organization has warned that reopening too quickly without a vaccine could trigger a second devastating wave of infections, and the body will host a virtual global health assembly this week to help chart a course out of the crisis. Once the worst-hit country in the world, Italy on Monday will take its latest step in a cautious, gradual return to normality, allowing businesses and churches to reopen after a two-month lockdown. . Businesses including restaurants, bars, cafes, hairdressers, and stores will be allowed to re-open on Monday. Gyms, pools, cinemas and theatres are allowed to open on May 25. Spain is also set to further ease its lockdown measures, while Germany has already taken several steps towards a reopening, including the resumption of its top football league — but with empty stadiums. Despite the optimism in parts of Europe, the deadly pandemic remains on the march having claimed more than 315,000 lives, with worrying data from South America and Africa offering a reminder of the severity of the crisis. Deaths in Brazil have risen sharply in recent days, and with more than 241,000 infections reached over the weekend, South America’s largest country now has the fourth-highest caseload in the world. But President Jair Bolsonaro has been a staunch opponent of lockdowns, claiming they have unnecessarily hurt the Brazilian economy, but experts and regional leaders have warned that the healthcare infrastructure could collapse. Latin America and the Caribbean have recorded more than half a million infections, with almost half of them from Brazil, and there is growing alarm about the impact of the virus on the least privileged in the region. Ecuador reported the first COVID-19 case in one of its indigenous Amazon tribes, deepening the crisis in one of South America’s hardest-hit countries. Rights groups in Nicaragua have accused the government of hiding the true number of COVID-19 cases by rushing burials.
Africa’s COVID-19 Cases Soar Past 88,000 As ‘Coronavirus Apocalypse’ Fears Loom -By the first week of April, coronavirus cases in African topped 10,000. Now over a month later that number stands at 88,172 according to the CDC Africa dashboard.This after a past 24-hour rise in cases by 2,538 according to the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa on Tuesday. Across the continent at least 2,834 people have died from COVID-19.The outbreak first appeared in Egypt in mid-February via what’s believed sourced to foreign travelers, and has since spread to all 54 countries on the continent. Last month the WHO’s regional director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, sounded the alarm in saying the pandemic in African looks to be potentially devastating: “COVID-19 has the potential not only to cause thousands of deaths, but to also unleash economic and social devastation,” Moeti said.The biggest clusters appear concentrated in those regions considered the busiest hubs of international and foreign travel, such as Egypt and Morocco in the north, and South Africa at the southern tip. However, the African continent is still nowhere near the ‘coronavirus apocalypse’ that many predicted (considering a total population of over 1.3 billion people), including for example Bill and Melinda Gates: In an April 10 interview with CNN, American philanthropist Melinda Gates expressed her belief that the coronavirus pandemic will have the worst impact in the developing world. She said she foresees bodies lying around in the street of African countries. A day later, it was announced that the United States, where Gates is from, had surpassed Italy in terms of the number of dead from COVID-19.… Gates is not the only one to be predicting total doom in Africa. A report released by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in April stated: “Anywhere between 300,000 and 3.3 million African people could lose their lives as a direct result of COVID-19.”
As West Cautiously Reopens, New Coronavirus Infection Clusters Emerge in Asia – WSJ – While the U.S. and other Western countries continued to take steps to reopen their economies after months of coronavirus lockdowns, Asian countries that enacted aggressive measures early in the pandemic were battling new clusters of contagion. More than 4.6 million cases of coronavirus have been recorded world-wide, including at least 313,127 deaths as of Sunday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. death toll accounts for more than a quarter of the global total. Some U.S. states further eased restrictions over the weekend, giving businesses more freedom to operate. On Saturday, Idaho, which began a phased reopening earlier this month, allowed dining-in restaurants to resume operations under social-distancing rules. New Jersey permitted chartered-boat services and watercraft rentals to resume on Sunday, as the number of new Covid-19 hospitalizations in the state has fallen in recent weeks. Gyms and movie theaters in Texas will reopen on Monday, despite a rise in infections and virus-related deaths there. Meanwhile, Walt Disney Co. said it would begin a phased reopening of its Disney Springs shopping and entertainment complex in Florida this coming week. Guests would be required to wear face coverings and undergo temperature screenings, the company said. Warmer weather drew large crowds to New York City and New Jersey beaches over the weekend, highlighting the challenges that the hardest-hit parts of the country face in enforcing social distancing this summer. China reported five new confirmed cases by the end of Saturday, including two imported cases and three domestic cases – all in Jilin province in the northeastern region bordering Russia and North Korea. Officials in the Fengman district of Jilin city on Sunday told residents they should stay at home, and shut down public spots including cinemas and karaoke bars. The district is the second place in China to reimplement such steps since the country began to ease stay-at-home measures in early April. A week ago, Shulan, another city in Jilin province, banned public activities after a woman hired to wash police uniforms spread the virus to 21 others in a one-week period. Meanwhile, authorities are conducting blanket testing in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the original center of the pandemic. The decision was made after six residents of a compound in western Wuhan were confirmed as infected last weekend, ending a 35-day streak of no new cases in the city.
As Modi government eases lockdown, coronavirus cases surge in India – India’s Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is further relaxing the nationwide anti-COVID-19 lockdown it first imposed for 21 days on March 25, even as cases of the highly contagious and potentially lethal virus surge. According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs on Sunday, during the “fourth stage” of the lockdown, which is slated to last until May 31, inter-State movement of passenger vehicles and buses will be allowed with the “mutual consent” of the states and Union Territories involved except in “containment zones,” where strict stay-at-home orders are in force. State governments will also be allowed to decide the “delineation of Red (hotspots), Green and Orange zones.” Intracity rail and subway services, education institutions, hotels, restaurants (excluding “home delivery of food items”), cinemas, and shopping malls are to remain closed, says the ministry statement, and religious and political gatherings “shall continue to remain prohibited throughout the country.” However, the Modi government, egged on by big business, is pushing for a quick resumption of manufacturing and other productive industries. In recent weeks, large sections of industry, especially in Special Economic Zones and those that are significant exporters, have been greenlighted to reopen. Yesterday, India’s largest auto manufacturer, Maruti Suzuki, reopened its Gurgaon, Haryana car assembly plant with 4,000 workers or about a third of the normal workforce called in to work. On May 12, Maruti Suzuki already relaunched operations at its nearby Manesar assembly plant. As of yesterday, India’s total number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths stood at 95,679, with 3,023 deaths. Since May 5, the total number of infections has more than doubled, rising from 46,711 to 96,169 yesterday. Only one month ago on April 18, India had recorded only 14,792 confirmed COVID-19 cases, less than a sixth of the current tally.
Breakthrough South Korean Study Finds Recovered COVID Patients Who Test Positive Aren’t Infectious – A study from the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that patients who test positive for COVID-19 after recovering from the illness appear to be shedding dead copies of the virus. That would suggest that these patients are not infectious, the scientists said, which helped dispel fears that some patients can remain infectious for months after being infected. While the study doesn’t answer every question about the virus’s longevity – such as patients who almost appear to have developed a “chronic” form of the illness because their symptoms have persisted for so long.But still, the finding was greeted as a major relief, and, if anything, should encourage economies to reopen more quickly, as a potential trigger for reinfection that had panicked some experts appears to be a non-issue.The research also undermines the reliability of ‘antibody’ tests like the ones NY Gov Andrew Cuomo insisted would be ‘critical’ for NY’s reopening. The results mean health authorities in South Korea will no longer consider people infectious after recovering from the illness. Research last month showed that so-called PCR tests for the coronavirus’s nucleic acid can’t distinguish between dead and viable virus particles, potentially giving the wrong impression that someone who tests positive for the virus remains infectious. The research may also aid in the debate over antibody tests, which look for markers in the blood that indicate exposure to the novel coronavirus. Experts believe antibodies probably convey some level of protection against the virus, but they don’t have any solid proof yet. Nor do they know how long any immunity may last.
Hundreds Of Villages Locked Down In Northeastern China As Beijing Mobilizes ‘Army Of Volunteers’ To Suppress Latest Outbreak -We had a hunch when we saw the Chinese press yesterday playing up China’s latest “milestone” of one month without any COVID-19-linked deaths that some, shall we say, suboptimal news would likely soon follow. And once again, our instincts proved correct: Local officials in China’s northeastern Jilin Province – which is situated along China’s border with Russia, which is presently struggling with a raging outbreak of its own – revealed on Saturday that the government was locking down hundreds of villages in the province, as well as some 1,000 residential buildings in Shulan, a small city (by Chinese standards) located in the center of the province, NBC News reports.Over the last couple of weeks, reports of new cases in the province led to officials in Beijing designating the province as “high risk” and imposing a “partial lockdown” be restored a few days ago.The CCP has blamed the latest outbreak on Russia and Chinese nationals living in the province who had recently returned from Russia. At least this theory absolves China of the blame, and reports of infected Chinese travelers returning from Russia have been popping up in the mainland press for months.Along with the lockdown measures, officials are launching a testing drive seeking to test as many residents of the province as possible. They’ve already tested ~20k of the provinces ~27.5 million residents. Meanwhile officials in Jilin Province are mobilizing tremendous resources including hundreds of nurses, doctors and volunteers. Most transport has also been halted to 1,205 villages and their surrounding areas.Shulan City Mayor Jin Hua said Saturday that all prevention and control measures had been “strictly implemented in accordance with the central government’s decision-making and the requirements of provinces and cities” since the beginning of the outbreak.She added that before May 7, there had “been no indigenous cases,” in the city, noting that likely some “Shulan nationals living abroad, especially Russia,” had returned with the virus.
WHO reports most global coronavirus cases in a day as total cases pass 5 million – Global coronavirus cases surpassed 5 million late Wednesday, with Latin America overtaking the United States and Europe in the past week to report the largest portion of new daily cases globally. More than 100,000 coronavirus cases were reported to the World Health Organization in the previous 24 hours, “the most in a single day since the outbreak began,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday. “We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” he said at a news conference in Geneva. “In the last 24 hours, there have been 106,000 cases reported to WHO – the most in a single day since the outbreak began.” It represents a new phase in the virus’ spread, which initially peaked in China in February, before large-scale outbreaks followed in Europe and the United States. Latin America accounted for around a third of the 91,000 cases reported earlier this week. Europe and the United States each accounted for just over 20%. A large number of those new cases came from Brazil, which recently surpassed Germany, France and the United Kingdom to become the third-largest outbreak in the world, behind the United States and Russia. The first 41 cases of coronavirus were confirmed in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 10 and it took the world until April 1 to reach its first million cases. Since then, about 1 million new cases are reported every two weeks, according to a Reuters tally. At more than 5 million cases, the virus has infected more people in under six months than the annual total of severe flu cases, which the World Health Organization estimates is around 3 million to 5 million globally.
Brazil coronavirus cases hit record high – CNN – Brazil hit a record high for new coronavirus cases Wednesday, after becoming the country with the third-highest number of confirmed cases in the world earlier this week.The country’s health ministry reported 19,951 new cases in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 291,579 confirmed cases.This new surge tops the previous record set Tuesday. Reported deaths caused by coronavirusalso increased by 888 on Wednesday, bringing to the country’s total to 18,859 deaths, the ministry said.Asked about Brazil’s skyrocketing numbers on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said that he was mulling a travel ban on Brazil.”We are considering it,” Trump said, adding: “We hope that we’re not going to have a problem. The governor of Florida is doing very, very well testing — in particular Florida, because a big majority come in to Florida. Brazil has gone more or less herd, and they’re having problems. “I worry about everything, I don’t want people coming in here and infecting our people,” Trump said, “I don’t want people over there sick, either.” Amid the spiraling health crisis, Brazil’s lower house of Congress has approved a proposed law that would make use the use of personal protection masks in public spaces mandatory. The proposed law would require people to wear any form of face covering in areas that are accessible to the public, including parks, sidewalks, public transportation and even private buildings where there is a high level of foot traffic. Individuals not wearing masks would be fined up to $52. The proposal needs approval by the Senate and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who rarely wears facial coverings. It is unclear when the Senate vote will happen.
WHO says South America new coronavirus ‘epicentre’: Live Updates – Brazil’s health ministry announced that 330,890 people have contracted the virus and 21,048 have died as cases continued to surge in Latin America’s largest country. Brazil is now third in the world in the number of cases after the US and Russia.
- South America has become an ‘epicentre’ of the COVID-19 pandemic with Brazil the hardest hit country, the World Health Organization’s Mike Ryan said on Friday.
- Britain will introduce a 14-day quarantine for almost all international travellers from June 8, interior minister Priti Patel has said, with anyone breaking the rules facing a $1,218 (a 1,000 pound) fine.
- Some 80 million infants could be at risk of vaccine-preventable diseases like diphtheria, measles and polio due to disruption of routine immunisation caused by the pandemic, UN agencies have warned.
- Spanish authorities have announced that they will partially lift the lockdown restrictions in Madrid on Monday, after the pace of the coronavirus contagion in the region slowed down.
- India has registered its biggest jump of coronavirus cases in 24 hours with 6,000 new infections as the country loosens a nationwide lockdown.
- More than five million people around the world are now confirmed to have the coronavirus, according to data compiled by the Johns Hopkins University. More than 328,000 people have died globally while some 1.9 million people have recovered.
Brazil records 1,179 COVID-19 cases in a single day amid spiraling political crisis – Brazil broke another record in COVID-19 fatalities on Tuesday, recording 1,179 deaths over the previous 24 hours. The country has officially confirmed over 290,000 cases and 19,000 deaths, but the government admits it has lost control of the pandemic’s spread. With the second lowest testing rate in the Americas – less than one-twentieth of the tests in the US – it has adopted an effective policy of “herd immunity” with dire consequences for the country’s population. Imperial College London has estimated that Brazil had over 4.2 million cases last week, with an accelerating rate of 6.5 percent growth every day, putting it on course to be the global pandemic’s epicenter. Twelve Brazilian capitals have over 80 percent occupation of intensive care units, with many dumping bodies in mass graves. In the second wealthiest city in the country, Rio de Janeiro, doctors have already received medical protocols to choose whom to treat, as ICUs are fully occupied. The government is consciously ignoring the public health catastrophe, fully engaged in a back-to-work campaign, declaring the whole of industry and construction as essential services that should be left out of partial quarantines imposed by local governments. An essential part of this drive has been the definition of hydroxychloroquine as a medicine to be freely used in treating COVID-19 cases, against widespread medical advice that it not only has no proven effectiveness against the disease but could lead to deadly side effects. The government’s promotion of the drug led to the resignation of Health Minister Nelson Teich, who declared he would not “stain his biography” in order to please the government and declare its safety against scientific evidence. Yesterday, the new interim minister, a military general, fulfilled Bolsonaro’s order and issued a new, wider, protocol for its use. For his part, Bolsonaro reacted to the record death toll joking about the freedom of “left-wingers” to take a soda drink instead of hydroxychloroquine, if they so desired. Even as it closes ranks behind Bolsonaro’s back-to-work campaign, the Brazilian ruling class is conscious that it is bringing Brazil to the brink of a social explosion. The government has constantly cited the 2019 mass demonstrations in Chile as an example of the “social chaos” that will ensue in the case of prolonged quarantines leading to economic downturn. It has ominously warned that it will adopt dictatorial measures in case of social unrest. In the country’s COVID-19 epicenter, São Paulo, the city council has already raised the specter of imminent looting. Under these conditions, Bolsonaro’s ignorance and criminal indifference to the mounting COVID-19 death toll are seen as a liability and have drawn growing criticism from within the ranks of the ruling elite itself. These sentiments were expressed by the vice president of the largest business lobby in the country, the São Paulo Industry Federation (FIESP), after Teich’s resignation. He said it was necessary to build public confidence for “families to get back to shops and factories,” but that the instability in the Health Ministry generated “uncertainty of what is happening in the country.” These divisions have fueled daily editorials in the bourgeois press denouncing Bolsonaro, not only for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis, but also for his attempts to mobilize a far-right base against state institutions. The editorialists fear this will contribute to workers’ resistance by exposing the authoritarian drive that must accompany the preparation of the ruling class for inevitable social explosions.
Brazil overtakes Russia to become world no. 2 in Covid-19 cases, behind US – Brazil became the world No. 2 hotspot for coronavirus cases on Friday, second only to the United States, after it confirmed that 330,890 people had been infected by the virus, overtaking Russia, the Health Ministry said. Brazil registered 1,001 daily coronavirus deaths on Friday, taking total deaths to 21,048, according to the Health Ministry. In Sao Paulo, the worst hit city, aerial video showed rows of open plots at the Formosa Cemetery as it rushed to keep up with demand. Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has been widely criticized for his handling of the outbreak and is at the center too of a deepening political crisis. The former army captain has seen his poll ratings drop, hurt by his opposition to social distancing measures, support of the unproven remedy chloroquine, and tussles with experienced public health officials. The true number of cases and deaths is likely higher than the figures suggest, as Latin America’s top economy has been slow to ramp up testing. The outbreak is accelerating. On Monday, Brazil overtook Britain to become the country with the third highest number of infections. It surpassed Russia on Friday, but is unlikely to pass the United States soon. The world’s No 1 economy has more than 1.5 million cases. Since the outbreak began, Bolsonaro has lost two health ministers, after pressuring them to promote the early use of anti-malarial drugs like chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine. Several high-profile public health experts have also left. Many have been replaced by soldiers. On Wednesday, Interim Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello, an active-duty army general, authorized new guidelines for the wider use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in mild cases.
China’s New Outbreak Shows Signs the Virus Could Be Changing – Chinese doctors are seeing the coronavirus manifest differently among patients in its new cluster of cases in the northeast region compared to the original outbreak in Wuhan, suggesting that the pathogen may be changing in unknown ways and complicating efforts to stamp it out. Patients found in the northern provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang appear to carry the virus for a longer period of time and take longer to test negative, Qiu Haibo, one of China’s top critical care doctors, told state television on Tuesday. Patients in the northeast also appear to be taking longer than the one to two weeks observed in Wuhan to develop symptoms after infection, and this delayed onset is making it harder for authorities to catch cases before they spread, said Qiu, who is now in the northern region treating patients. “The longer period during which infected patients show no symptoms has created clusters of family infections,” said Qiu, who was earlier sent to Wuhan to help in the original outbreak. Some 46 cases have been reported over the past two weeks spread across three cities — Shulan, Jilin city and Shengyang — in two provinces, a resurgence of infection that sparked renewed lockdown measures over a region of 100 million people. Scientists still do not fully understand if the virus is changing in significant ways and the differences Chinese doctors are seeing could be due to the fact that they’re able to observe patients more thoroughly and from an earlier stage than in Wuhan. When the outbreak first exploded in the central Chinese city, the local health-care system was so overwhelmed that only the most serious cases were being treated. The northeast cluster is also far smaller than Hubei’s outbreak, which ultimately sickened over 68,000 people. Still, the findings suggest that the remaining uncertainty over how the virus manifests will hinder governments’ efforts to curb its spread and re-open their battered economies. China has one of the most comprehensive virus detection and testing regimes globally and yet is still struggling to contain its new cluster. Researchers worldwide are trying to ascertain if the virus is mutating in a significant way to become more contagious as it races through the human population, but early research suggesting this possibility has been criticized for being overblown.
Why a New Virus Cluster in China Is Triggering Alarms — A cluster of Covid-19 cases in China’s Rust Belt region has intensified worry over a second wave of coronavirus infections. The central and local leadership have instituted strict measures, including halting public transport services for more than 100 million people and sealing off residential compounds in some cities, as Chinese President Xi Jinping called for strengthened controls. While many other countries are still grappling with the first wave of outbreak, this re-emergence in China, while still small, is putting the world on alert.The first case was reported May 7 in the northeastern province of Jilin, on the border with Russia and North Korea, and as of May 21 had spread to at least 46 people, all linked with each other. Officials have yet to identify “patient zero,” but suspects include a woman who works in the laundry at a police station in the city of Shulan, and may have been in contact with one or more people from Russia, which is behind only the U.S. in number of confirmed cases. One of China’s top doctors said patients in Jilin appeared to be asymptomatic for a longer period than was usual in Wuhan, where the coronavirus emerged last year, but didn’t elaborate on what those findings were based on. He told state television the cases in the first two weeks seem to show damage mostly in the lungs, with only 10% developing into critical cases. The northeast cluster is tiny compared to the earlier outbreak in central Hubei province, where Wuhan is located. (More than 68,000 people were infected there; its 11-week lockdown ended April 8.) Yet Beijing is taking the outbreak just as seriously. Jilin city is already setting up an emergency response that could turn two stadiums into hospitals in 24 hours. The Chinese government is eager to show stability as its annual political meeting is set to convene this week, with top leaders gathering to assess economic growth in the wake of the pandemic.These coronavirus cases are showing a different gene sequence from the outbreak in Hubei, while identical with imported cases from Russia. Changes in the virus’s genetic sequence could make it harder for officials to detect. It also would create hurdles for vaccine research and development for pharmaceutical companies that are racing to stop the spread of Covid-19. Researchers worldwide are studying whether the virus is mutating in a significant way to become more contagious, but the likelihood of that has been called overstated in some early research. Since the Wuhan lockdown, China has been aggressive in virus testing, and is signaling that it will react with a hammer to every cluster, implementing stricter measures as needed to contain spread. That is a different approach from other economies such as South Korea and Hong Kong, which have refrained from any lockdown despite new clusters found in clubs and medical centers. Such harsh methods would be more complicated, however, if infections appear in more economically important provinces or the top cities.
China’s Newest COVID-19 Outbreak Shows Virus May Be Mutating – During the earliest days of the pandemic, when medical journals like The Lancet were publishing some of the first non-peer-reviewed studies about the virus by scientists and researchers in China, experts warned about mutations in various strains of the virus, though they insisted that there was still no evidence to suggest that the virus was evolving into something more dangerous and more infectious. And yet, medical experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci have seemed at times overly eager to dismiss these mutations, and claim – without evidence – that there was no reason to believe the virus was evolving and changing in a way that might complicate efforts to create a vaccine. Which is why we’re highlighting this Bloomberg report from yesterday describing the latest findings from doctors and researchers in northeastern China who are seeing the coronavirus manifest differently among patients in this new cluster, suggesting that the virus may indeed by changing in unknown ways and complicating efforts to stamp it out.It’s just one more reason why the notion of keeping economies partially closed until a vaccine is widely available is simply untenable: Someday, the “believe science” crowd will come to understand that projections like the model forecasting 3k deaths per day by June are just that – projections. And just like stock-market analysts, scientists aren’t great at predicting the future, because projections are never an ‘exact’ science. But for now, the most important thing to understand is that we really don’t have any idea how long it will take to develop this vaccine. The 18-24 months projection parroted by Dr. Fauci and many experts is based on little more than a hope and a prayer based on their experience with other viruses. Other notable differences between SARS and SARS-CoV-2 have already been identified: why not this too? The two biggest differences doctors have noted after studying the 46 cases of the virus confirmed over the past weeks are that patients take longer to show symptoms, and are taking longer to recover. Patients found in the northern provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang appear to carry the virus for a longer period of time and take longer to test negative, Qiu Haibo, one of China’s top critical care doctors, told state television on Tuesday.Patients in the northeast also appear to be taking longer than the one to two weeks observed in Wuhan to develop symptoms after infection, and this delayed onset is making it harder for authorities to catch cases before they spread, said Qiu, who is now in the northern region treating patients. “The longer period during which infected patients show no symptoms has created clusters of family infections,” Furthermore, doctors are noticing that patients in the northeast are suffering damage to their lungs, while in Wuhan, patients exhibited damage in their kidneys, hearts and across their internal organs.
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