• The Maths Logic That Could Help Test More People for Coronavirus

    By Usama Kadri

    Rapid testing of patients is of great importance during a pandemic. But at a time when there aren’t enough COVID-19 tests or testing has been slow, is there a way to enhance the process? As a mathematician and engineer, I asked myself if there was anything a theoretician could do to help meet the demands of the World Health Organization to test as many patients as possible. Well, there might be a way to test many patients with a few test tubes. Instead of using one test tube to produce a result for one sample, we can use several test tubes to test many more samples – with the help of some logic. The general idea is simple. A sample taken from each of our theoretical patients is distributed to half of the test tubes that we have, in different combinations. If we have ten test tubes, for example, we would distribute the samples from each patient into a different combination of five of them. Any tube that tests negative tells us that all the patients that share that test tube must be negative. Meanwhile, test tubes that test positive could contain samples from a number of positive patients – and an individual patient will test positive only if all their associated test tubes are positive.

  • The U.S. Army Wants Your Ventilator Ideas

    The U.S. Army has opened a design competition for ventilators intended for “short-term, rugged field operation…that will support field hospitals,” service officials announced Thursday. Patrick Tucker writers in Defense One that the winners, as determined by judges with the Army’s xTech Covid-19 program, will get $100,000 to develop a prototype. “Select technologies may receive follow-on contracts for additional production and deployment,” the announcement says. Interested participants can enter via the project website. There will be a virtual pitch session on April 13.

  • Coronavirus Research Done Too Fast Is Testing Publishing Safeguards, Bad Science Is Getting Through

    It has been barely a few weeks since the coronavirus was declared a pandemic. The pace at which the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread across the globe is jolting, but equally impressive is the speed at which scientists and clinicians have been fighting back.
    Irving Steinberg writes in The Conversation that he is a pharmacotherapy specialist and has consulted on infectious disease treatments for decades. “I am both exhilarated and worried as I watch the unprecedented pace and implementation of medical research currently being done. Speed is, of course, important when a crisis such as COVID-19 is at hand. But speed – in research, the interpretation and the implementation of science – is a risky endeavor,” he writes.
    The faster science is published and implemented, the greater the chances it is unsound. Mix in the panic and stress of the current pandemic and it becomes harder to make sure the right information is communicated and adopted correctly. Finally, governing bodies such as the World Health Organization, politicians and the media act as sources of trustworthy messaging and policy making. Each step – research, interpretation, policy – has safeguards in place to make sure the right information is acquired, interpreted and implemented. But pace and panic are testing these safety measures like never before.

  • Point-of-Care Tests for Respiratory Infections Could Save U.K. Millions, Study Finds

    Comprehensive use of currently available point-of-care tests (POCTs) to diagnose respiratory infections could save England’s National Health Service (NHS) up to £89 million ($110 million US) a year, according to a cost analysis published yesterday in the Journal of Medical Economics. Chris Dall writes in CIDRAP that the savings would result from fewer antibiotics being prescribed for the type of acute respiratory infections (ARIs) that are most likely caused by viruses, fewer return trips to the doctor, and fewer antibiotic-related adverse events (AEs). And the savings could rise significantly if more accurate diagnostic tests were available, the authors of the analysis suggest.

  • In the Rush to Innovate for COVID-19 Drugs, Sound Science Is Still Essential

    By Christopher Robertson, Alison Bateman-House, Holly Fernandez Lynch, and Keith Joiner

    Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have been at the center of debate in recent weeks over which drugs should be used to treat COVID-19. Neither product has strong evidence to support use for this purpose, and small studies reported to date have either had significant flaws or failed to demonstrate effect. Nonetheless, the president can’t seem to stop pushing them, arguing that patients have nothing to lose. As physicians, bioethicists and drug law experts, we have a responsibility to inject caution here. As public officials and scientists rush to innovate, no one should overlook the critical role of strong regulatory protections in supporting our ability to actually figure out which drugs work against COVID-19. Weakening commitment to science and evidence during this crisis truly would be “a cure worse” than the disease.

  • Why It Is So Hard to Produce What’s Needed to Tackle Coronavirus

    Manufacturers are stepping up to meet the severe shortage of ventilators prompted by the current coronavirus pandemic – and not just companies in the medical industry. Numerous firms from the aerospace and defense sectors, and even Formula One, have offered their services. Peter Ogrodnik writes in The Conversation that in the UK, domestic appliance maker Dyson, defense contractor Babcock and the Ventilator Challenge U.K. consortium (including leading firms such as Airbus and Ford) have all received orders to make thousands of new ventilators to meet the government’s target of an extra 30,000. Rather than simply helping scale up production of existing products, these firms are working with designs that have never before been used or tested in real settings. While all efforts are welcome, there are likely to be some major challenges for manufacturers trying to enter the medical devices sector for the first time. Journalists reported with amazement that the first batch of devices from the Ventilator Challenge UK consortium would include just 30 units. But there are some good reasons why novel ventilators can’t simply be turned out in large amounts with just days’ notice.

  • The Best Hopes for a Coronavirus Drug

    If there is a way to stop COVID-19, it will be by blocking its proteins from hijacking, suppressing, and evading humans’ cellular machinery.
    Sarah Zhang writes in The Atlantic that the new coronavirus has, at most, twenty-nine proteins in its arsenal to attack human cells. That’s 29 proteins to go up against upwards of tens of thousands of proteins comprising the vastly more complex and sophisticated human body. Twenty-nine proteins that have taken over enough cells in enough bodies to kill more than 80,000 people and grind the world to a halt.
    If there is a way—a vaccine, therapy, or drug—to stop the coronavirus, it will be by blocking these proteins from hijacking, suppressing, and evading humans’ cellular machinery.

  • Collecting the Sounds of COVID-19

    As COVID-19 is a respiratory condition, the sounds made by people with the condition – including voice, breathing and cough sounds – are very specific. A new app, which will be used to collect data to develop machine learning algorithms that could automatically detect whether a person is suffering from COVID-19 based on the sound of their voice, their breathing and coughing, has been launched.

  • Rethinking Biosecurity Governance

    Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from the current coronavirus pandemic is how to learn future lessons without having to experience a pandemic, whether natural in origin or made by humans. We must rethink and test assumptions about relationships between biological research, security, and society to plan for biosecurity threats.

  • Coronavirus: There’s No One Perfect Model of the Disease

    By Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths

    The world is gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the spread of a virus called SARS-CoV-2. Since the emergence of this new virus, mathematical modelling has been at the forefront of policy decision-making around the disease. Different models depict different scenarios. Do these seemingly differing findings mean that one model is more accurate than the other? And if so, which one is correct? In truth, credible models developed by respectable research teams are mathematically sound and elegantly answer their posed questions using appropriate data. So more importantly than answering the question “which one is correct?” — we need to understand the differences between the different models and discuss why they come to seemingly different conclusions.

  • Solving the Ventilator Shortage with Windshield Wiper Parts

    Hospitals across Texas had an estimated 3,730 ventilators in 2009 during the H1N1 pandemic, according to research published in 2017. That supply is enough to handle patient needs during mild to moderate pandemic scenarios. However, during a more severe scenario, statewide projected demand would top 10,000 ventilators, the research found, far exceeding 2009 resources. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are building a new type of ventilator made of cheap, widely available materials to help fill the demand created by the spread of COVID-19 for these critical devices that help patients breathe.

  • Engineers Develop 3-D-Printed Ventilator Splitters

    In response to a pressing need for more ventilators to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients, a team led by Johns Hopkins University engineers is developing and prototyping a 3D-printed splitter that will allow a single ventilator to treat multiple patients. Though medical professionals have expressed concerns about the safety and effectiveness of sharing ventilators, the team has designed this tool to address those concerns. Their prototype, developed in response to the urgent need for more ventilators to treat patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by COVID-19, aims to address concerns about cross-contamination and correctly managing air flow to patients.

  • Tiger at Bronx Zoo Tests Positive for COVID-19

    A four-year-old female Malayan tiger at the Bronx Zoo has tested positive for the coronavirus.
    The tiger, named Nadia, is believed to be the first known case of an animal infected with COVID-19 in the United States.
    The BBC reports that the Bronx Zoo, in New York City, says the test result was confirmed by the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Iowa.
    Nadia, along with six other big cats, is thought to have been infected by an asymptomatic zoo keeper. The cats started showing symptoms, including a dry cough, late last month after exposure to the employee, who has not been identified.
    The pandemic has been driven by human-to-human transmission, but the infection of Nadia raises new questions about human-to-animal transmission.

  • 3D-Printer Owners Rally to Create NHS Face Masks

    Some 1,400 3D-printer owners have pledged to use their machines to help make face shields for the NHS.
    The BBC reports that the 3DCrowd UK group was started by palliative-medicine doctor James Coxon, and is now looking to recruit more volunteers.
    It says thousands of its 3D-printed masks have already been made and donated to hospitals, GPs, pharmacies, paramedics and social-care practices.
    Healthcare workers say they are having to put themselves at risk because of a lack of personal protective equipment.
    “We are basically asking all the people around the country with 3D printers to join our project to create face shields for hospitals and other health workers,” said Gen Ashley from 3DCrowd UK.

     

  • OxVent Gets Green Light by U.K. Government to Proceed to Next Stage of Testing

    It was announced last night that Oxvent team has been shortlisted by the U.K. government to go to the next stage of testing for safety and usability of the company’s ventilator prototype. This is following the government’s recent callout for rapidly deployable ventilator designs in response to the Coronavirus pandemic and forecasted acute shortage of ventilators.
    Oxvent says that this green light enables the company to test the prototype ventilators. If the ventilator then passes the required MHRA safety tests, it will rapidly move into production with the medical manufacturing company, Smith and Nephew (S&N) based in Hull.
    After manufacture it would be deployed through the NHS. “Our design could also be used in other healthcare settings,” Oxvent says.