• The Weeks’ Main Developments

    The past week saw several encouraging developments: China has lifted the lockdown at Wuhan, while Austria, Denmark, Israel, and Germany announced that this coming week they will begin easing the stay-at-home restrictions in order to allow some economic activity to resume. President Trump will announce in Tuesday the names of members of a task force charged with examining different ways to begin reopening the American economy in May. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that a small group of patients showed improvements after receiving remdesivir, an experimental coronavirus treatment made by Gilead Sciences. The drug is seen by global health authorities as the best shot at becoming a treatment for COVID-19. And an Oxford scientist said her group will start human testing of a coronavirus vaccine this week, adding that it is likely that the vaccine will be ready for general use by September.

  • Data Do Not Back Cloth Masks to Limit COVID-19, Experts Say

    Limited, indirect evidence from lab studies suggests that homemade fabric masks may capture large respiratory droplets, but there is no evidence they impede the transmission of aerosols implicated in the spread of COVID-19, 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, because no studies have been done on the effectiveness of cloth masks in preventing transmission of coronavirus to others, it is impossible to assess their benefits, if any.

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

    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.

  • 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.