-
COVID-19 Activity Escalating in Africa, Middle East
Though Latin America has evolved as the world’s biggest hot spot, COVID-19 activity is escalating in other regions, including Africa, which just passed 200,000 cases, and the Middle East, where cases have accelerated over the past 3 weeks. The global today rose to 7,440,350 cases, and 418,563 people have died from their infections.
-
-
COVID-19's “Devastating” Impact on Cancer Services
COVID-19 has “wreaked havoc” on cancer services, experts have said, as new data reveals referrals fell to their lowest ever levels in the first full month of lockdown. Henry Bodkin writes in The Telegraph that NHS figures show that numbers more than halved between March and April. The statistics also revealed that the proportion of patients seen by a cancer specialist within two weeks after an urgent GP referral is at its lowest level since records began.
-
-
Exploring the Links Between Coronavirus and Vitamin D
In the past decade, studies have found that taking vitamin D can lower the odds of developing respiratory infections like the cold and the flu, especially among people who have documented deficiencies. Anahad O’Connor writes in the New York Times that now scientists are trying to find out whether vitamin D might also help protect against Covid-19.
-
-
Facemasks Shown to Cut Spread of Coronavirus
The mandatory use of facemasks slows the growth in new cases of COVID-19 by 40 percent, according to a German study that provides the best evidence yet for their use. Tom Whipple writes in The Times that the research was able to use the staggered introduction of masks in shops and public transport across Germany as a natural experiment to test how effective they were. By looking at new cases in the days that followed, the researchers concluded that there is “strong and convincing statistical support” that the masks “strongly reduced the number of incidences.”
-
-
Why Some Nursing Homes Are Better than Others at Protecting Residents and Staff from COVID-19
The coronavirus pandemic has posed a serious threat to the U.S. long-term care industry. A third of all deaths have been nursing home residents or workers – in some states it’s more than half. Anna Amirkhanyan, Austin McCrea, and Kenneth J Meier write in The Conversation that, yet, some long-term care facilities have managed to keep the virus at bay. For example, veterans’ homes in California have seen only a handful of cases among roughly 2,100 residents. And preliminary results of our research on COVID-19 cases and deaths in nursing homes also support the idea that some homes are doing better than others at protecting clients and staff from COVID-19. Why might this be?
-
-
States Are Making It Harder to Sue Nursing Homes over COVID-19, and that Immunity from Lawsuits Is a Bad Idea
The coronavirus has devastated nursing homes across the country, killing tens of thousands of vulnerable older Americans. Nursing homes did not cause the pandemic, but poor infection control, inadequate staffing and sluggish mitigation allowed the virus to spread. Tara Sklar and Nicolas Paul Terry write in The Conversation that rather than doing more to hold these facilities accountable, however, states increasingly are protecting them from lawsuits. That shift is happening quickly. At least 21 states have taken actions within the last four months to limit the liability of health care providers, with nine states expressly including nursing homes. The industry is calling for similar protection in other states, and at the federal level, nursing homes are connecting with other trade groups to push for expansive, national immunity from lawsuits. Essentially, these states are protecting nursing homes from aggrieved residents and their loved ones who may have suffered harm, injuries or death due to their actions – or inactions – during COVID-19.
-
-
Could Pressure for COVID-19 Drugs Lead the FDA to Lower Its Standards?
Given the death, suffering, social disruption and economic devastation caused by COVID-19, there is an urgent need to quickly develop therapies to treat this disease and prevent the spread of the virus. But the Food and Drug Administration, charged with the task of evaluating and deciding whether to approve new drugs and other products, has a problem. Leigh Turner writes in The Conversation that the FDA’s standards appear to be dropping at a time when rigorous regulatory review and robust oversight are crucial. For example, on March 28, the FDA granted emergency use authorization (EUA) for chloroquine phosphate and hydroxychloroquine sulfate, despite the drugs having known safety concerns and negligible evidence of efficacy in treating COVID-19. As a specialist in bioethics and public health, I see troubling signs that suggest the FDA’s new program for expediting reviews of potential therapies for COVID-19 is not working as it should. Instead, its regulatory oversight has been weakened. In its place, I see signs of political interference, inappropriate pressure to authorize products for emergency use, and an overwhelming surge of clinical studies that challenges the FDA’s capacity to carefully scrutinize them before deciding whether they should proceed.
-
-
Prof Karol Sikora: COVID-19 Death Toll May Be Less than Half of What Has Been Recorded
The Covid-19 death toll may be less than half of what has been recorded because many victims of the pandemic would have died soon anyway, one of Britain’s leading medics has said. Jack Hardy writes in The Telegraph that Professor Karol Sikora, a senior oncologist who has built a huge Twitter following for his positive takes on the virus crisis, said doctors were sometimes too eager to put Covid-19 on death certificates.
-
-
Coronavirus: Five Reasons Why the U.K. Death Toll Is So High
At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, UK government advisers suggested that 20,000 UK deaths would be a good outcome. Today, the tally sits at more than 45,000. Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths writes in The Conversation that there is no doubt the UK has been hit hard by coronavirus, and has the second-largest number of deaths worldwide, trailing only the USA which has five times the population and 111,139 deaths. Where did the UK go wrong? And how will it prevent further deaths if a secondary pandemic wave occurs as it reopens? Modelling and epidemiology give us some clues.
-
-
Congress Should Investigate the Trump Administration’s Coronavirus Response
Charlie Martel, who in 2008-2009 led the staff of a bipartisan Senate investigation of the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, writes that “Today, as with Katrina, the nation is faced with a deeply flawed federal response to an ongoing crisis with catastrophic consequences on a historic scale.” He adds: “Having apparently discarded the careful pandemic planning it inherited, the Trump administration has no evident strategy guiding its response to the complex crises created by the coronavirus. Administration statements and decisions have been impulsive, contradictory and in some instances dangerous. Congressional oversight is necessary to review the federal response and correct it where necessary.”
-
-
EU: China, Russia Waging Broad Pandemic Disinformation Campaign to Deepen Crisis
The European Union, in an unusually blunt language, has accused Russia and China of a running a broad, sustained, and “targeted” disinformation campaign inside the European Union, aiming to deepen and lengthen the coronavirus pandemic crisis and its negative medical, economic, and social effects. The EU has criticized Russia in the past for its sophisticated disinformation campaign aiming to weaken the West and undermine liberal democracies, but the direct criticism of China is a break from the EU recent approach, which saw it tiptoeing around China’s many transgressions.
-
-
Scientists Aim Gene-Targeting Breakthrough against COVID-19
A team of scientists from Stanford University is working with researchers at the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience user facility located at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), to develop a gene-targeting, antiviral agent against COVID-19, the Berkeley Labreports.
-
-
New Identification of Genetic Basis of COVID-19 Susceptibility Will Aid Treatment and Prevention
The clinical presentation of COVID-19 varies from patient to patient and understanding individual genetic susceptibility to the disease is therefore vital to prognosis, prevention, and the development of new treatments. The European Society of Human Genetics reports that for the first time, Italian scientists have been able to identify the genetic and molecular basis of this susceptibility to infection as well as to the possibility of contracting a more severe form of the disease.
-
-
Majority of First-Wave COVID-19 Clinical Trials Have Significant Design Shortcomings, Study Finds
Most of the registered clinical trials of potential treatments for COVID-19 underway as of late March were designed in ways that will greatly limit their value in understanding potential treatments, according to a study from researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
-
-
Biomedical Sciences Researchers Provide Methods to Inactivate and Safely Study SARS-CoV-2
Detailed methods on how to perform research on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, including procedures that effectively inactivate the virus to enable safe study of infected cells have been identified by virologists in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.
-
The long view
Huge Areas May Face Possibly Fatal Heat Waves if Warming Continues
A new assessment warns that if Earth’s average temperature reaches 2 degrees C over the preindustrial average, widespread areas may become too hot during extreme heat events for many people to survive without artificial cooling.