• 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.

  • Studies: Smoking, Age, Other Factors Raise Risk of COVID-19 Death

    The increased risk for COVID-19 pneumonia in people who smoke cigarettes or have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may be at least partly explained by increased levels of an enzyme that enables the virus to more easily enter their lungs, according to a research letter published today in the European Respiratory Journal. Mary Van Beusekom writes in CIDRAP that in the same journal, a study has identified advanced age, underlying cardiovascular or cerebrovascular illnesses, low levels of CD3+CD8+ T cells (indicating damaged immune response), and high levels of cardiac troponin (indicating heart damage) as predictors of death in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.

  • 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.

  • Nations Eye COVID-19 Lockdown Extensions as Global Cases Rise

    With COVID-19 activity showing some early signs of stabilizing in parts of Europe, some governments are considering extending their lockdown orders, as cases are still surging or picking up in other parts of the continent. Meanwhile, cases are accelerating in part of Asia, including Indonesia, Singapore, and Japan, and economic leaders are grappling with the pandemic’s economic impact and how to fund the response. The pandemic total reached 1,579,690 cases in 184 countries, along with 94,567 deaths.

  • U.S. Military, Government Workers Still Use Zoom Despite FBI Warning

    U.S. military and government employees continue to use the popular videoconferencing application Zoom for official business, despite FBI warnings about privacy and security issues, an action experts fear is increasing the risk of government data breaches.  

  • The Economic Recovery Won’t Only Be U-Shaped – It’ll Look Like a Wheelbarrow

    The economic effects of the coronavirus crisis will be severe but short-lived, according to much of the recent commentary. The cautious revival in stock markets points in the same direction, while recent polling suggests that 75 percent of business people share this view. Most of them expect economic activity to rebound this year. We hope that this optimism is correct, but the economic recovery will most likely be long and slow. We are talking U-shaped at best – and probably more like a wheelbarrow than a wok.

  • “Faster Protection with Less Material”

    Uli von Andrian is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Immunopathology at Harvard Medical School and Program Leader of Basic Immunology at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. In an interview with the Harvard Office of Technology Development (OTD), von Andrian suggests that further research and development on a class of molecules called bisphosphonates might turbocharge a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus, and help bring immunity to huge populations more quickly.

  • Pandemic cases hit 1.5 million

    In the latest global COVID-19 developments, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said yesterday that pandemic activity in the region hasn’t peaked yet, despite early signs of decline in Italy and Austria, and the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) pushed back against President Donald Trump’s recent criticism. Yesterday the pandemic total surpassed 1.5 million cases from 184 countries, with 87,984 deaths.

  • 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.

  • Experts: COVID-19 Pandemic Unlikely to Ebb as Weather Warms

    Although some pundits have suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic will dissipate with coming warm temperatures and high humidity in the Northern Hemisphere, the virus is unlikely to be seasonal in nature, according to a paper published yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
    Mary Van Beusekom writes in CIDRAP that in the paper, the National Academies’ Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats said that the number of well-controlled studies showing reduced survival of the coronavirus in elevated temperatures and humidity is small and urged caution not to over-interpret these results because of varied and questionable data quality.

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

    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.

  • The $90 Trillion Question Is How to Get People Back to Work

    Officials from Rome to Washington are urgently mapping out plans to loosen lockdowns and begin rebooting their economies even as the coronavirus pandemic still rages across swaths of the globe.
    Enda Curran, Frank Connelly, and Suzi Ring write in Bloomberg that, trouble is, there’s no master plan.
    The juggling act for policy makers will be to reopen without triggering a second wave of infections that leads to a fresh round of lockdowns and yet more economic damage. History serves as a warning: the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, the world’s worst health crisis until this one, hit in three waves before finally being contained.

  • Bill Gates Makes More Coronavirus Predictions, Good and Bad News

    Bill Gates, now known best for warning the world five years ago about a coming pandemic, delivered more predictions on Wednesday about Covid-19, some bound to disappoint and others optimistic.
    Robert Delaney writes in the South China Morning Post that the bad news is that an effective Covid-19 vaccine is not likely until somewhere around September 2021, and the U.S. will not be able to ease up on social distancing measures that have shut broad swathes of its economy until the end of May this year without risking a resurgence in cases.
    The good news, according to Gates, is that the world will not likely face another pandemic after Covid-19 because lessons learned about testing and surveillance, and internationally financed medical solutions now under way to respond to the current crisis, will be able to contain future human pathogens before they reach the “global, tragic scale” of the current one.

  • 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.