Feb. 15, 2021
Vaccine supply is not keeping up with demand
Americans are being vaccinated against the coronavirus, but distribution problems are causing delays and frustration for those who are waiting to get a shot.
Vaccines created by the Pfizer and Moderna drug companies were developed in record time, but two months after the drug rollouts, only 10 percent of Americans-34.7 million- have received one dose. Only 3 percent, or 11.2 million people have received both shots needed to develop immunity to COVID-19.
Demand is outpacing supply, as local health officials try to inoculate the public while relying on a distribution system that is unstable at best.
The federal government has sent out 68.3 million doses to U.S. states and territories with many kept in reserve for second inoculations. But logistical problems and other factors have left medical authorities with rotating shortages that make planning difficult.
Last week, officials in Los Angeles County announced that they will be closing five of their vaccination sites including Dodger Stadium, one of the largest inoculation venues in the nation, according to the New York Times.
The city was to have run out of vaccine by Thursday forcing closure throughout the weekend. Some sites may reopen by Wednesday Feb 17, said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
“We’re vaccinating people faster than the new vials arrive here in Los Angeles,” Garcetti said. “I’m concerned as your mayor that our vaccine supply is uneven, it’s unpredictable and too often inequitable.”
In San Francisco, vaccinations were halted at two sites, Moscone Center and City College. The Oakland Coliseum was opened as a federal vaccination site Tuesday and officials are predicting that they can administer 6,000 shots daily for eight weeks. A similar site was opened at California State University, Los Angeles.
Under rules adopted by many states, initial vaccinations were reserved for people over the age of 75, medical personnel and “first responders” like police and firefighters.
Delays are caused when drug companies don’t have the necessary ingredients to make vaccine. Both the Pfizer and Moderna versions rely on genetic messenger RNA technology which has left producers scrambling for materials such as plasmids, nucleotides and enzymes.
“The vaccine is fairly new, the design in very cutting edge,” said Jennifer Pancorbo, of North Carolina State University’s Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center.
“All these components that are necessary to make the vaccine are not necessarily available at the scale that we need right now,” she said in an interview with Scientific American.
Vital equipment is also in short supply, said Glenn Richey of Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business.
“We’re seeing issues with the production of vials and syringes and those types of things that actually move the product from the storage container to the person,” he said.
The Biden administration said last week it had secured 200 million more doses of coronavirus vaccines, enough to inoculate every American adult, but President Biden warned that logistical hurdles would most likely mean that many Americans will still not have been vaccinated by the end of the summer.
Both vaccines are two-dose regimens, spaced three and four weeks apart. Biden lamented the “gigantic” logistical challenge he faces during an appearance at the National Institutes of Health. He also expressed open frustration with the previous administration.
“It’s one thing to have the vaccine,” Biden said. “It’s another thing to have vaccinators.”.”
Biden has promised to administer 100 million doses during the first 100 days of his presidency which ends on April 30.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief consultant on pandemic strategy, had predicted that vaccines would be available to the general public by April but said Tuesday his timeline has been moved back to late May or early June.
Vaccine supply is not keeping up with demand
Americans are being vaccinated against the coronavirus, but distribution problems are causing delays and frustration for those who are waiting to get a shot.
Vaccines created by the Pfizer and Moderna drug companies were developed in record time, but two months after the drug rollouts, only 10 percent of Americans-34.7 million- have received one dose. Only 3 percent, or 11.2 million people have received both shots needed to develop immunity to COVID-19.
Demand is outpacing supply, as local health officials try to inoculate the public while relying on a distribution system that is unstable at best.
The federal government has sent out 68.3 million doses to U.S. states and territories with many kept in reserve for second inoculations. But logistical problems and other factors have left medical authorities with rotating shortages that make planning difficult.
Last week, officials in Los Angeles County announced that they will be closing five of their vaccination sites including Dodger Stadium, one of the largest inoculation venues in the nation, according to the New York Times.
The city was to have run out of vaccine by Thursday forcing closure throughout the weekend. Some sites may reopen by Wednesday Feb 17, said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
“We’re vaccinating people faster than the new vials arrive here in Los Angeles,” Garcetti said. “I’m concerned as your mayor that our vaccine supply is uneven, it’s unpredictable and too often inequitable.”
In San Francisco, vaccinations were halted at two sites, Moscone Center and City College. The Oakland Coliseum was opened as a federal vaccination site Tuesday and officials are predicting that they can administer 6,000 shots daily for eight weeks. A similar site was opened at California State University, Los Angeles.
Under rules adopted by many states, initial vaccinations were reserved for people over the age of 75, medical personnel and “first responders” like police and firefighters.
Delays are caused when drug companies don’t have the necessary ingredients to make vaccine. Both the Pfizer and Moderna versions rely on genetic messenger RNA technology which has left producers scrambling for materials such as plasmids, nucleotides and enzymes.
“The vaccine is fairly new, the design in very cutting edge,” said Jennifer Pancorbo, of North Carolina State University’s Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center.
“All these components that are necessary to make the vaccine are not necessarily available at the scale that we need right now,” she said in an interview with Scientific American.
Vital equipment is also in short supply, said Glenn Richey of Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business.
“We’re seeing issues with the production of vials and syringes and those types of things that actually move the product from the storage container to the person,” he said.
The Biden administration said last week it had secured 200 million more doses of coronavirus vaccines, enough to inoculate every American adult, but President Biden warned that logistical hurdles would most likely mean that many Americans will still not have been vaccinated by the end of the summer.
Both vaccines are two-dose regimens, spaced three and four weeks apart. Biden lamented the “gigantic” logistical challenge he faces during an appearance at the National Institutes of Health. He also expressed open frustration with the previous administration.
“It’s one thing to have the vaccine,” Biden said. “It’s another thing to have vaccinators.”.”
Biden has promised to administer 100 million doses during the first 100 days of his presidency which ends on April 30.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief consultant on pandemic strategy, had predicted that vaccines would be available to the general public by April but said Tuesday his timeline has been moved back to late May or early June.
January 15,2021
Global death toll rises
As people throughout the world wait to get a lifesaving coronavirus vaccine, the pandemic shows no sign of letting up.
The global death toll reached 2 million on Friday with 93 million victims having contracted the virus since the pandemic began in early 2020. The United States leads the world, with more than 23 million infections and close to four million deaths (see chart below).
The nation is averaging 240,000 new cases per day.
Health officials says the disease’s rapid spread can be attributed to people not adhering to safety measures such as wearing masks or avoiding crowds.
But several new mutated viral strains, which are much more infectious, are circulating throughout Europe and at least one had been discovered in the U.S.
The new mutation was at first discovered in Britain but has spread to 23 other nations. More than 230 million Europeans are living in government-ordered lockdowns.
And things are not likely to get better soon. Distribution of vaccines manufactured by two major drug companies has been chaotic in the United States as a disjointed system of local health departments struggles to immunize millions of Americans.
At the beginning of the week, officials of the Trump administration announced that a large batch of vaccines would be released and urged states to begin inoculating Americans 65 years of age and older.
To date, more than 10 million people have received at least one of two doses required to build up immunity to the virus. These have been mostly given to health workers, emergency services personnel and patients in nursing homes. The feds had hoped to inoculate up to 20 million people by the end of 2020.
The announcement created soaring demand, but state officials learned later that the additional stockpile contained only enough vaccines for those who have received their first shot.
In California, hospitals and health systems were deluged with calls from seniors eager to get vaccinated. Members of the Kaiser Permanente health system, one of the state’s largest, had to endure four-hour waits on a phone line designed to handle vaccine appointments. Kaiser will reportedly begin inoculating seniors 65 and other on Monday.
Phone lines for another health system completely collapsed and a third system informed patients that they could get a vaccine only if they were at least 75 years old.
A federal spokesman said 13 million doses are available for states to distribute as first and second shots but many have not ordered the full amount they are entitled to.
Meanwhile most Americans will have to wait and health agencies will do what they can despite a lack of coordination.
“I think states have been doing their best to plan with whatever information they can get from the feds on expected future allocations and then revising those plans if they get less,’’ said Dr. Marcus Plesia, the chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
“What is more concerning is that public expectations have been raised and limited supply may lead to significant disappointment.”
January 12, 2020
Order will require that people 65 and older get innoculated
A flood of vaccine will soon begin flowing to states as federal officials try to stop the recent uptick in Coronavirus cases and deaths.
Health Secretary Alex Azar announced Tuesday that all available doses will be released immediately and told state health officials to begin vaccinating all people over the age of 65 and those with health conditions that make them more at risk for virus-related death.
The announcement is a major policy shift for the Trump administration which had been holding back much of the vaccine so that Americans who have received the first of two required doses would get the second injection in a timely manner.
So far, the vaccine has been distributed only to medical personnel, first responders and nursing home residents.
Azar and others had criticized an identical proposal by President-elect Joe Biden because, they said, it would jeopardize the flow of vaccine supplies and the timely application of a second shot.
Both vaccines authorized in the United States require two doses: 21 days apart for the one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, and 28 days apart for the one from Moderna.
More than 9 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 151,000 have been fully vaccinated, according to the New York Times.
But more than 375,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and daily deaths are now topping 4,000 nationwide. Azar said the change in policy “reflects the urgency of the situation we face.”
January 10, 2020
Rioters likely to spread COVID-19
The violent takeover of the U.S. capitol by followers of President Donald Trump will likely cause more coronavirus cases, the nation’s top health official said this week.
Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Sacramento Bee that the sudden insurrection on Wednesday will spread the disease not only to the rioters, but to members of Congress and law enforcement caught up in the event.
“I do think you have to anticipate that this is another surge event. You had largely unmasked individuals in a non-distanced fashion who were all through the capitol,” he said.
“Then these individuals all are going in cars and trains and planes going home all across the country right now, ‘’he continued. “This is an event that will have public health consequences.”
Three members of the House of Representatives have tested positive since the siege. Brad Schneider, Bonnie Coleman Watson and Pramila Jayapal, all Democrats, said they were infected while huddled in a secure location with other Congress members who did not wear masks during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“Today, I am now in strict isolation, worried that I have risked my wife’s health and angry at the selfishness and arrogance of the anti-maskers who put their own contempt and disregard for decency ahead of the health and safety of their colleagues and our staff,” Schneider said.
On Sunday, Representative Chuck Fleischmann, Republican of Tennessee, who was also in protective isolation at the Capitol during the siege, said that he had tested positive for the virus after being exposed to his roommate, Representative Gus Bilirakis of Florida, also a Republican.
The pandemic shows no signs of letting up. The nation reported 4,000 virus- related deaths on Thursday, the highest daily total so far.
Those numbers are likely to increase, possibly reaching as high as 5,000 fatalities daily. Redfield said.
“We haven’t hit the peak of the current surge. Clearly the mortality we are seeing as many of us are trying to stress is more than we saw on Pearl Harbor and 9/11 over and over again. That’s the state of the pandemic unfortunately we are at right now.”
Individuals gathering indoors during the holidays without masks or other safeguards are fueling the rise in virus cases.
Since Jan. 4, 13,500 additional Americans have died of COVID 19.
That’s higher than the total number of dead after the Pearl Harbor attacks of World War II, casualties during the D-Day landings, the 9/11 attacks and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire combined, according to USA Today.
Vaccine effective against new forms of COVID-19.
A vaccine now being circulated by the Pfizer and BioNTech drug companies is effective against some mutated forms of the coronavirus, company officials said Friday.
The announcement was good news to the scientific community but experts said the virus could still create some dangerous strains.
“It’s a step in the right direction, ‘’said Dr. John Brooks, chief medical officer for the Centers for Disease Control pandemic response. “I’m hoping that the additional work that comes out in the future will fall in line with that finding.”
The mutated strain was discovered in Britain during December and has since turned up in 45 countries, including the United States. It is not more potent than the current viral versions spreading across the world but is thought to be more contagious.
Virus puts strain on California resources
Hospitals throughout California are having a difficult time keeping up the growing number of COVID-19 patients and deaths.
Hospitals are running out of space in intensive care units where critically ill patients are treated.
In Los Angeles County and the state’s San Joaquin Valley, ICU units are already at capacity. Ambulance crews are being told to cut back on the use of oxygen when transporting patients and not to being in people who have no chance of surviving, according to the Los Angeles Times.
With intensive care capacity under 15 percent at most hospitals, the San Francisco Bay Area remains under a curfew and lockdown which began in early December.
Conditions may get worse soon because most victims now hospitalized were infected during the Thanksgiving holidays but cases caused by interpersonal contact during the Christmas and New Years holidays have yet to show up.
Dec. 24, 2020
Pandemic numbers grow even as vaccine arrives
While there may be light at the end of the tunnel, the near term outlook for the global coronavirus pandemic is dark and foreboding.
To date, the nation has 18.3 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 324,000 deaths. Another 3,401 Americans perished Wednesday, the second highest total on record, according to Johns Hopkins University. The nationwide death toll during the previous seven days approached 19,000. (see below)
Public health officials are worried that the casualty rate will go even higher as people gather for the Christmas holiday on Friday. They are urging the public to abandon traditional family events and stay home to avoid becoming infected through close contact.
The situation is especially dire in California where intensive care units at many hospitals are nearing or at capacity. Field hospitals are being set up to handle the overflow.
“We’re struggling to add capacity for COVID patients as we speak,” said Greg Adams, Chief Executive of Kaiser Permanente. Sixteen of the Kaiser system’s 36 hospitals were over capacity in intensive care and four others reached or were nearing capacity by Wednesday.
California reported more than 62,000 new coronavirus cases on Monday and 372 deaths on Tuesday. That was a substantial increase from the previous week when virus fatalities averaged 233 victims daily.
While infection rates in the San Francisco Bay Area were dipping slightly authorities are bracing for another surge after Christmas.
“I must stress that we have a long way to go,’’ said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “Gathering for the holidays outside of your household need to be avoided at all costs.”
Authorities continue to enforce a strict lockdown including a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew for all non-essential activities. An order limiting the number of shoppers to only 20 percent of a store’s capacity has made holiday shopping much more difficult.
Shoppers waited for more than an hour to enter one Oakland grocery store Wednesday and waits are expected to be even longer on Christmas Eve.
Despite the current hardships, Americans can take heart from the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine which is now being given to hospital staff and “first responder” personnel like police officers and firefighters.
The vaccine’s manufacturer, Pfizer and BioNTech announced this week that they have agreed to supply 100 million doses of the drug to the United States. A total of 200 million doses should be available by July of 2021, according to reports.
After months of negotiating, Congress has passed a multi-billion dollar funding bill designed to bring economic relief to out of work Americans and small businesses which have been hard hit by virus-related lockdowns.
But President Trump is holding up the legislation because he favors stimulus payments of $2,000 per person rather than the $600 payment Congress approved.
Virus mutation breaks out in U.K.
A mutated version of COVID-19 has broken out in the United Kingdom and officials are concerned that it may be more contagious than current forms of the virus.
Discovery of the new version promoted British prime minister to impose stricter lockdown measures during the Christmas holidays while officials in Germany and the Netherlands have banned travel from the U.K. A pair of students who returned to Hong Kong this week tested positive for the new strain as well as one person in Italy who had not been to Britain. A total of 50 countries have banned flights from Britain due to the outbreak.
Scientists say the mutation is one of many variations that have occurred as the virus has spread around the world. It’s not a superbug, they insist, and would not be impervious to the new COVID-19 vaccines now being distributed.
But evidence suggests that it does spread more rapidly. The overall number of coronavirus cases has spiked in areas of southern England where the mutated virus has been found. Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College in London, said the new mutation spreads 50 to 70 percent faster than other variants.
December 10, 2020
Vaccine gets important approval
As the coronavirus continues to ravage the nation, the first important steps towards defeating the pandemic were taken Thursday.
After a lengthy hearing, a committee of vaccine scientists recommended distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine created by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
If the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the vaccine, inoculations could begin within a few days among health workers and nursing home residents. More than 20 million people will be treated in the first round of distribution, officials have said.
The approval amounted to an “emergency use authorization” requested by the drug companies to get the vaccine to the public has soon as possible. Approvals normally take more time, but F.D.A. officials said the companies did not short circuit the process by releasing a product that was not adequately tested for safety.
The vaccine cannot come fast enough as the U.S. continues to report record virus infections and deaths. More than 3,000 Americans died Wednesday and health experts expect the surge to continue as people infected during the Thanksgiving holidays turn up in emergency rooms.
Many states, including California, have instituted new strict quarantine rules to stop the virus spread. On Thursday, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam approved a midnight to 5 a.m. curfew in his state.
But the vaccine is not without risk for some people. Officials in the first nation to distribute the drug -the United Kingdom- reported that a pair of health workers became sick after receiving their shots earlier this week.
The pair had a history of allergic reactions and each of the victims carried emergency adrenaline auto injectors as a precaution against anaphylactic reactions.
British health officials recommended that anyone with major allergic reactions to vaccines, medicine or food should avoid the inoculation.
Trump supporters get special treatment
Despite a shortage of an experimental drug used to treat coronavirus victims, supporters of President Donald Trump had no problem getting the medicine, according to the New York Times.
Trump received the monoclonal antibody cocktail made by Regeneron when he was hospitalized for COVID 19 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in October. Trump said he felt “great” after the treatment, and that Americans would soon get the drug free.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson also received the drug after being infected as did former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, also received the Regeneron drug after being hospitalized at Georgetown University Hospital this week.
December 8, 2020
Shutdown orders issued
As Americans celebrate the holiday season, the coronavirus is becoming an unwelcome guest at the festivities.
A new surge of infections, possibly caused by people attending Thanksgiving celebrations, is showing up throughout the nation. Faced with an alarming daily rise in cases and deaths, authorities are imposing shutdown orders.
On Dec. 2, the U.S. logged 14 million Covid-19 cases just hours after setting three grim records: the highest number of daily deaths, new infections and hospitalizations since the pandemic began.
The U.S. reported 2,777 coronavirus-related deaths on Dec. 2 alone, according to an NBC News tally. The country registered nearly 205,000 new cases of Covid-19 on the same day, a figure that comes just a month after the U.S. single-day record topped 100,000 cases for the first time.
Meanwhile, more people than ever are hospitalized. The Covid Tracking Project reported that 100,000 people were hospitalized across the country.
The pandemic has been widespread in California, where a record 34,931 COVID-19 cases were reported on Dec. 7. The nine county San Francisco Bay Area region reported more than 3,000 infections.
Of special concern is the state’s death toll which reached 800 last week including 65 victims in the Bay Area. Both totals were 80 percent higher than the previous week.
Hospitals are beginning to fill up with COVID-19 patients and Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a series of statewide shutdowns designed to keep intensive care units from being overwhelmed.
Under the order, indoor and outdoor dining is prohibited, museums, zoos and entertainment centers are shuttered and residents must stay home. Mixing with people from other households is forbidden. Californians can attend religious services and take part in protests if they are outside.
Newsom’s crackdown takes effect once regional hospitals are down to 15 percent of icu capacity. The order began Sunday in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California where critical care beds were down to 6.6 percent and 10.3 percent respectively.
Bay Area hospitals have not reached the state minimum, but health authorities in the nine county area imposed the restrictions anyway.
Retailers can remain open but must operate at only 20 percent of normal indoor capacity. This has caused lines to form outside businesses. Travel is also restricted and anyone coming into the state must quarantine in the hotel for a given period before being allowed to visit relatives.
Some Californians, including a few health authorities, have admitted the shutdowns are draconian but it’s unclear how far the state will go to enforce the restrictions.
November 23, 2020
As the number of coronavirus cases continues to reach record highs, vaccines to stop it are just around the corner.
On Monday, drug manufacturer Astra Zeneca announced that it’s ‘vaccine was 90 percent effective in preventing test subjects from becoming infected by COVID-19. This follows similar results from two other vaccines being created by other competing pharmaceutical firms.
Formulated with the aid of scientists at Britain’s Oxford University, the Astra Zeneca vaccine is inexpensive at $2.50 per dose and does not require elaborate cold storage while being distributed.
Officials at the other two companies, Pfizer and Moderna have applied for permission to distribute their drugs on an emergency basis to help speed up the process of inoculating some 20 million Americans.
The vaccine breakthroughs cannot come soon enough. According to USA Today, the United States has reported more daily coronavirus cases in the past 12 days than in any single month of the pandemic. The total reached 1,978,287 new infections, the newspaper reported.
November 21, 2020
Vaccine may be available next month
A vaccine to protect against the coronavirus may be ready for distribution by mid-December if federal authorities will permit it.
Representatives for the pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer Friday applied for permission to issue the company’s new vaccine on an emergency basis rather than wait for the long approval process by the U.S. Food and Drug administration.
Pfizer says its vaccine is more than 95 percent effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19. A competing firm, Moderna has made similar claims for its new anti-coronavirus drug.
Emergency approval would allow the companies to distribute the drug to select groups while their vaccines are going through the formal approval process.
If the approval is granted, about 20 million Americans-mostly health care workers and nursing home residents- could get the vaccines by mid-December, according to the New York Times.
Curfews ordered
Better get home before 10 p.m. now that authorities in at least two states have ordered overnight curfews to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced this week that beginning Saturday, Nov. 21, people cannot leave their homes between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. the following morning except for essential reasons. Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio issued a similar order which went into effect on Nov. 19.
Other cities that have imposed curfews include Pueblo, Colo. and Miami-Dade County Fla. Authorities in New York and Chicago are closing bars and restaurants at 10 p.m.
Public health authorities said the measures were necessary because people can contract the virus at late-night gatherings where they drink, sing or otherwise engage in close distance behavior.
November 18, 2020
Quarantine restrictions ordered
A devastating new wave of COVID-19 infections is forcing many states to reinstate restrictions imposed when the pandemic began earlier this year.
By Tuesday, the nation reported 11.2 million coronavirus cases and 247,000 deaths. Worldwide the toll has exceeded 55 million cases and 1.3 million deaths.
Evidence of the pandemic began to turn up around March. But by summer, a decline in the number of infections encouraged many U.S. governors to ease up on store closures and other quarantine plans.
All of that changed this fall as the pandemic has made a remarkable comeback. More than 1,000 Americans are dying each day and recent daily spikes have been higher than at any time during the summer. Hospitalizations of critically ill coronavirus victims are now approaching 70,000, a record for the year.
Public health experts predicted a second wave of infections in the fall as more people remain inside due to cold weather and some schools and colleges reopen.
They are urging people to avoid gathering in larger indoor groups during the traditional Thanksgiving holiday, according to Yahoo Finance.
“I would stay home. I would think about cancelling honestly,” said University of Alabama at Birmingham Associate Dean for Global Health Dr. Michael Saag.
“I know I sound like the Thanksgiving equivalent of Ebenezer Scrooge, but we are in the middle of the pandemic that is exponentially growing.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday announced a return of tough restrictions in 41 of the state’s counties following a 51 percent rise in virus cases in the last 10 days.
Indoor businesses including restaurants, gyms, museums and places of worship must close. Shopping malls and retail stores can remain open but must remain at 25 percent of customer capacity.
Similar restrictions are being adopted in other hard-hit states including Iowa, Ohio, West Virginia and Utah where residents are now required to wear a mask while in public. Those states are also governed by Republicans who have been reluctant to impose restrictions in light of quarantine criticism by President Donald Trump.
Trump has been reassuring the public that a coronavirus vaccine will be available soon, and on Monday the biotech firm Moderna reported that its vaccine is 95 percent effective at treating COVID-19 infections.
Earlier the pharmaceutical company Pfizer reported that its vaccine was 90 percent effective in clinical trials. But no timeline has been set for final approval of both medicines by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Trump’s refusal to cooperate with the incoming administration of President elect Joe Biden could increase the number of deaths by delaying planning and distribution of the vaccine, Biden said Monday.
October 28, 2020
Daily infection rate on the rise
As states relax restrictions aimed at stopping COVID-19, the number of new infections is rising at an alarming rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost 500,000 new cases of the coronavirus have been reported in the U.S. in the last seven days. Most states now have 100,000 total cases and several, including California, Texas and Florida, have 700,000 infections (see chart below). The outbreaks are straining the nation’s health care resources as many medical centers are nearing full capacity with the total number of hospitalized victims exceeding 41,000 nationwide.
Cleaning objects not necessary to stay safe
It may not be necessary to disinfect your groceries or the daily mail to avoid contacting the coronavirus, experts said this week.
According to the Washington Post, scientists agree that the virus is rarely passed through contact with tainted surfaces. Fearful Americans have been wiping down all items they buy or get delivered to avoid contact with the virus. But the public can ease up such stringent measures, said David Morens, senior adviser to pandemic expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“To the best of my knowledge in real life, scientists like me-an epidemiologist and a physician—and virologists basically don’t worry too much about these things.”
Officials at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agree and have updated their web page to read “spread from surfaces is not thought to be the common way” coronavirus is transmitted.
Studies, including research from Australia, have shown that virus particles can be detected on surfaces such as glass and stainless steel for up to 28 days. But such research is often conducted under experimental conditions and the presence of the virus doesn’t mean it could infect anyone because airflow, sunlight and heat all weaken COVID-19, he added.
“The amount of virus that can persist might not be the amount of virus that can affect you in a real-world environment.”
October 18, 2020
Virus cases on the rise again nationally
The coronavirus pandemic shows no sign of stopping. The United States now has more than 8 million infected citizens, an increase of more than 1 million in less than 30 days. The national death toll now stands at 218,000.
U.S. health officials reported 60,000 new infections on Wednesday, the highest daily total since Aug. 14.
Colder weather in many parts of the country, which is forcing people inside, may be one cause for the rise in infections. College students returning to campus maybe spreading the virus along with Americans who are tired of restrictive COVID-19 precautions, officials speculated.
More than 25 states have set records for new cases this month. The Midwest and Northeast have been especially hard hit with infections doubling in states such as Wisconsin, South Dakota and New Hampshire.
California remains the state with the most total cases followed by Texas, Florida, New York and Georgia. Those five states account for more than 40 percent of all reported COVID-19 cases in the nation. (See chart below)
With cases and positive test rates rising in recent weeks, New York City has closed businesses and schools in neighborhood hot spots despite protests from a small contingent of Orthodox Jews.
Prehistoric humans passed on deadly genes
Mankind’s prehistoric ancestors may have been responsible for some coronavirus deaths, according to a theory being promoted by a pair of European researchers.
The scientists have discovered that a strand of DNA that triples the risk of developing severe Covid-19 was passed on from Neanderthals to modern humans when both species joined around 50,000 years ago.
Today around 16 percent of Europeans and 50 percent of south Asians carry the gene.
The origins of the risk genes came to light when researchers in Sweden and Germany compared the DNA of gravely sick coronavirus patients with that of Neanderthals and their sister group, the Denisovans
The stretch of DNA that makes patients more likely to fall seriously ill closely matched that collected from a Neanderthal body in Croatia, according to Britain’s Guardian newspaper quoting the website, Nature.
“I almost fell off my chair because the segment of DNA was exactly the same as in the Neanderthal genome,” Hugo Zeberg, an assistant professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, told the Guardian.
Zeberg and his co-author, Svante Pääbo, director of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, suspect the Neanderthal genes have persisted in modern humans because they were once beneficial, perhaps helping to fight off other infections. Only now – when faced with a new infection – has their downside been exposed.
It is unclear how the genes may worsen COVID-19, but one gene plays a role in the immune response and another has been linked to the mechanism the virus uses to invade human cells.
“We are trying to pinpoint which gene is the key player, or if there are several key players, but the honest answer is that we don’t know which are critical in Covid-19,” Zeberg said.
October 2,2020
Trump hospitalized, given antibody drug
President Donald Trump is “fatigued” after contracting COVID-19 and is being treated with an experimental antibody cocktail to fight the illness, White House officials said Friday.
Trump and First Lady Melania Trump shocked the nation when they announced Thursday night on Twitter that they were infected with the potentially deadly coronavirus.
Both are in voluntary quarantine and Trump went to Walter Reed National Medical Center for tests Friday afternoon. Their son, Barron Trump, tested negative as have others in Trump’s inner circle including Vice President Mike Pence.
Earlier in the week, Hope Hicks, a senior advisor to the president, tested positive. Hicks had accompanied Trump to a political rally and to Cleveland on Tuesday, where he debated former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden and his wife tested negative for the disease and moderator Chris Wallace is awaiting test results.
Presidential physician Dr. Sean Conley said Trump, 74, “remains fatigued’’ but was in good spirits Friday. Trump received a drug that is still in clinical trials by the bio tech company Regeneron, Conley said.
Initial results suggest that Regeneron’s treatment can lower the level of the virus in the body when administered early in the course of an infection.
The president has cancelled all public appearances including a planned rally this weekend in Wisconsin.
In a brief video message the president tweeted shortly after arriving at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he looked tired. He declared that he is “doing very well” and suggested that he was visiting the hospital only as a precaution.
Health experts are not certain how Trump was exposed to the virus, but evidence points toward an appearance last weekend with his latest Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.
A guest at that event, the Rev. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame University, has tested positive along with Republican chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.
Trump’s exposure is a counterpoint to his often contemptuous attitude toward the virus and efforts aimed at stopping its spread. Public health experts have urged the public to wear face masks in public to avoid contamination, but the president has rarely been seen wearing one.
His political rallies draw large crowds of unmasked followers and Trump has sometimes been critical of shutdowns in states where the virus has taken a heavy toll.
Conley and other White House officials have reason to be concerned about Trump’s chances of recovery, because the president falls into a high risk category of coronavirus patients. Older men are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as women, because males produce a weaker immune response.
Obesity is another factor in the death of older male patients, experts have said. Trump, who does not hide his love of cheeseburgers, is overweight.
“If you don’t know anything about Donald Trump, just knowing that he‘s a male over 70, and appears to be overweight, right away you could say he’s in a high risk group,” said Michael Baker, a professor of global health at the University of Otego in Wellington, New Zealand.
But most patients, even those who are older, survive after being exposed, Baker added.
“The good news is that even people who have a number of risk factors on average, do well,” he said. ”Only a minority have illness and severe consequences.”
Trump now joins a club of global leaders who have contracted the virus. They include British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Brazilian President Jain Bolsanaro and Britain’s Prince Charles.
Academy award winning actor Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson also tested positive earlier this year while in Australia. All have recovered.
Since the pandemic began in this country eight months ago, 7.3 million Americans have been infected and more than 200,000 have died from COVID-19 related illness.
September 25,2020
U.S. virus deaths hit an all-time high
The United States passed a grim milestone in its fight against the coronavirus this week.
By Thursday, more than 203,000 Americans had died from virus related complications; the highest pandemic death rate in the world, according to John Hopkins University statistics. More than 7 million cases of COVID-19 have been documented in this nation since the virus was first discovered in March.
To stop the spread, states adopted extensive restrictions including social distancing to keep people at least six feet apart and mandatory wearing of masks to prevent coronavirus germs from being disseminated when infected victims talk to others. Companies and many public employers shut down entirely to prevent workers from passing the infection onto others. That has had a devastating effect on the economy, pushing unemployment to levels not seen since the Great Depression.
The precautions were controversial, sparking protests among conservative groups who claimed the restrictions violated their freedom. President Donald Trump has often been at the center of the upheaval often denouncing local government lockdown measures.
Critics have been especially vocal following revelations that he downplayed the virus threat after being told six months ago that COVID-19 was deadly. Trump said he did do to avoid creating a public panic.
Trump this week praised his administration’s response to the pandemic.
“We’ve done a phenomenal job,” he said. “Not just a good job, a phenomenal job.”
In late March, a coronavirus task force predicted that between 100,000 and 200,000 American would die even with stiff health mandates in place.
Coronavirus infection and death rates have declined since the pandemic began only to shoot up again in states where businesses reopened and children and college students have returned to the classroom.
Experts from the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation estimate that an additional 200,000 victims could die of COVID -19 by the end of the year. Public health authorities say the rate of infection could rise as more people stay indoors during the fall and winter. The medical system could be especially challenged as coronavirus cases continue during the annual flu season which normally begins around October.
Dogs are joining the virus fight
You might say that officials at Finland’s Helsinki airport are dogged in their determination to test travelers for the coronavirus.
They’re using trained dogs to sniff out the virus on airline passengers as they enter the country. The test is voluntary and takes 10 seconds. After passengers collect their luggage, they are asked to wipe the sweat off their necks and leave the cloth in a box. A trainer than puts the box behind a wall along with cans containing other scents.
If the dog senses a unique virus smell, the passenger is asked if he or she would be willing to get a conventional virus test at the airport’s health center.
Dogs are legendary for their acute sense of smell and can detect explosives, drugs and other illegal items in airline luggage. Other dogs throughout the world are capable of sniffing out cancer, diabetes and other diseases for diagnosis.
Other nations, including Britain, France and the United States are testing virus dogs. Finnish officials say if the pilot program proves successful, dogs could be used in retirement homes and other institutions to avoid unnecessary quarantines.
September 19,2020
Vaccine trials resume in Britain
A pharmaceutical company that halted its vaccine trials after a test subject became ill will resume testing in Britain, company officials said this week.
But AstraZeneca will not lift a halt on testing in other countries and a timeline for delivery of an effective vaccine to counteract the deadly coronavirus pandemic is still undetermined.
AstraZeneca Pfizer and Moderna are among the three companies that are currently testing their candidates in late-stage clinical trials in the United States.
All three have said they expect to have a vaccine ready — at least for high-priority groups — before the end of the year. On Sept 12 Pfizer repeated previous statements that it could have an answer about whether its vaccine works by the end of October.
Pfizer, said it was expanding the trial of its coronavirus vaccine to 44,000 people — a big increase from its previous goal of 30,000 — in an effort to recruit a more diverse group of participants and potentially cut down the time needed to get results from the trial.
But AstraZeneca did not offer any information to support the decision to partially resume trials and would not give any details about the illness of a patient that had led to the suspension.
A great deal of uncertainty remains about what happened to the unnamed patient, to the frustration of those avidly following the progress of vaccine testing. AstraZeneca, which is running the global trial of the vaccine it produced with Oxford University, said the trial volunteer recovered from a severe inflammation of the spinal cord and is no longer hospitalized. Severe side effects associated with any trial vaccine could place its development in jeopardy.
Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control told senators that even if a vaccine were available now, vaccinating enough Americans for widespread immunity could take six to nine months. He estimated that one could be available for limited use by the end of the year, and for wider distribution by the middle of 2021, echoing a timeline that other top health officials, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, had used in recent weeks.
During the hearing, Redfield also said that masks are “the most important, powerful public health tool we have” in fighting the pandemic.
He said universal mask use could bring the pandemic under control in a few months and said, “I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take a COVID vaccine"
September 11,2020
Vaccine trials halted after subject is sickened
An international drug company has stopped large scale trials of a coronavirus vaccine after a participant in the drug testing program developed a serious adverse reaction.
While it’s not known if the sickness was caused by the vaccine, the delay will allow manufacturer AstraZeneca to conduct a safety review. Company officials did not give a timeline for the investigation.
Clinical trials, in which thousands of volunteers are given the drug to measure the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing coronavirus infection, are being conducted by several drug companies.
AstraZeneca, working in conjunction with researchers at Britain’s Oxford University, was considered the front runner in the race with late stage clinical trials underway throughout the world. It was hoped that a vaccine could be ready by the end of the year. If the patient’s reaction was related to the vaccine, that timeline could delayed significantly.
President Donald Trump has said he would like to have a vaccine in play by Election Day, Nov 3. Critics have said that is unrealistic and that the drug must be proven safe before it can be given to the public.
On Tuesday, nine companies including AstraZeneca pledged to “Stand with science” and not release any drug that has not been thoroughly tested for safety and efficacy.
Grim pandemic forecast predicts rising coronavirus death rate
The U.S. coronavirus death toll could more than double by the end of the year, according to a forecast prepared by researchers at the University of Washington.
Researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation project that an additional 220,000 Americans will die of the virus over the next four months bringing the total to 410,000 victims.
That number could soar to 620,000 if the nation continues to reduce social distancing practices, the researchers said.
The only way to keep the death toll under 300,000 this year is for 95 percent of Americans to wear a mask when they leave home each day, according to the forecast. Currently only 45 percent of the U.S. public masks up daily.
Trump downplayed virus threat, author claims
Donald Trump deliberately downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic even after being informed of the infection’s deadly potential, author Bob Woodward claims in a pending book.
Trump told Woodward that “I always wanted to play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”
CNN released audio of Woodward’s March 19 conversation with the president which reaffirmed the statement. Woodward claims that Trump was informed about the dangers of COVID-19 weeks before the infection started killing Americans. In subsequent remarks, Trump told the public that the virus would disappear, and that it was no more serious than influenza.
After Democrats and other critics lambasted Trump for not sharing his knowledge of the virus threat, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted that the president has “always taken it (coronavirus) seriously.”
He was “expressing calm” and “embodied the American spirit of unity in the face of the pandemic,” she added.
August 19,2020
More children are contracting COVID-19
The number of children exposed to the Coronavirus has been steadily increasing since the pandemic began in March, according to health officials.
While children account for 22 percent of the nation’s total population, they comprise 7 percent of all virus cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
“Recent evidence suggests that children likely have the same or higher viral loads in their nasopharynx compared with adults and that children can spread the virus effectively in household and camp settings,” according to the center’s report.
Transmission of the virus may have been slowed by mandatory quarantine measures and school closures during spring and summer.
But with some schools reopening, the threat of further infection returns. Some teachers have opted to quit rather than be exposed, according to CNN.
“So if I’m put into a classroom with 30 or more kids, it’s a small room, there’s one exit, the ventilation isn’t that great for schools,” said Arizona teacher Matt Chicci, who quit his job.
Other school districts including most in California, have opted for “distance learning” with students connected to the classroom via the Internet.
In Georgia, where several school districts recently reopened, more than 1,000 students and adults have been forced into quarantine after contracting the virus or being exposed.
A 15-year-old Atlanta boy died from COVID-10 recently following the death of a 7-year-old child from Savannah. Health officials did not release information on how the teen caught the virus, but said he had other health conditions. On Aug. 15, the state reported 3,372 new virus cases and 96 deaths.
Georgia has had a total of 235,168 cases during the pandemic and 4,669 deaths.
North Paulding High School, where a photo of hallways filled with students went viral, reported 21 confirmed cases during the week of Aug. 8-14.
The school has now adopted online “virtual learning” but will bring students back on campus beginning Aug. 24.
Health officials have downplayed the risk of viral infection in children but the CDC report stresses that kids can develop severe complications once infected and that one in three is admitted to intensive care. That’s the same ratio as adults, according to the report.
Chinese find COVID-19 in imported food
Residents of two Chinese cities have found Coronavirus in imported frozen food, but American and global health authorities say there is nothing to worry about.
A sample taken from the surface of Brazilian chicken wings and packages of frozen Ecuadorian shrimp tested positive when opened in the city of Xian.
As cases of the virus increase throughout the world, there is concern that the virus may be passed through food or packaging. New Zealand officials, who previously said that they had stopped the pandemic in their country, are investigating whether several new cases may have arrived in foreign freight.
But experts are skeptical.
“People should not fear food, the packaging of food or the delivery of food,” said Mike Ryan of the World Health Organization.
In a joint statement, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug administration said “there is no evidence that people can contract COVID-19 from food or food packaging.”
Virus ancestors present in nature for four decades
Ancestors of the Coronavirus that is causing infection and death worldwide have likely been around for more than 40 years, a British researcher has found.
Present in bats, the COVID-19 virus has been capable of infecting humans through animal hosts for quite some time, researchers said. Their findings refute conspiracy claims that the viruses were concocted in a Chinese laboratory.
Writing in the journal Nature Microbiology, Prof. David Robertson of the University of Glasgow said the SARS-COV2 virus is genetically very close to the nearest known bat viruses but is separated by several decades.
“We really do need to understand where or how the virus has crossed into the human population. If we now believe there's this generalist virus circulating in bats, we need to get better at monitoring that,” he told the British Broadcasting Company.
The work suggests the need to look for emerging diseases in humans and to carry out more sampling within wild bat populations, if we are to prevent future pandemics, he said.
"If these viruses have been around for decades that means that they've had lots of opportunity to find new host species, including humans," said Prof Robertson.
The virus was first discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan but the method of infection from animals to humans has not been determined. One theory is that the disease was passed on when people ate infected wild animals like civets or pangolins.
August 12, 2020
Fall football season cancelled
Two more of college football’s conferences have cancelled fall games due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Officials of the Pac-12 which includes university teams in California, Oregon,
Washington, Arizona, Utah and Colorado announced Tuesday that the football season will be postponed to protect student athletes from the virus.
Games may resume in the spring, but there are no guarantees. Organizers of the Big Ten conference, which includes most major Midwestern universities, have also cancelled their fall football season.
The Pac-12 decision was universally expected. The league has multiple teams that would have difficulty starting practice this week because of local government restrictions. The virus has been especially impactful in California and Arizona, which houses six of the 12 schools.
Russians claim new virus preventative
Russia has approved a coronavirus vaccine but researchers are skeptical that it could be effective.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday that a COVID-19 vaccine has been developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, even though phase III trials of the vaccine had yet to be completed. Such trials involve giving thousands of people a vaccine or a placebo injection, and then following them to see if the vaccine prevents disease.
Scientists around the world have condemned the decision saying that it is premature. Giving the drug to the public before testing its safety could put many people at risk and harm global efforts to develop a quality vaccine, the researchers said.
More than 200 COVID-19 vaccines are in development worldwide and several are already in phase III trials, with more frontrunners slated to begin theirs soon. But researchers think that the earliest one of those vaccines could be approved is still months away.
August 5, 2020
Outlook for virus vaccine uncertain at best
Despite multiple efforts to develop a Coronavirus vaccine, there might never be a “silver bullet” to stop the pandemic, world health officials are warning.
More than 18.44 million people around the world are reported to have been infected with the disease and 698,023 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Some nations that thought they were over the worst of the pandemic are now experiencing a resurgence in cases.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan exhorted all nations to rigorously enforce health measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing, hand-washing and testing.
“The message to people and governments is clear: ‘Do it all’,” Tedros told a virtual news briefing from the U.N. body’s headquarters in Geneva. He said face masks should become a symbol of solidarity round the world.
“A number of vaccines are now in phase three clinical trials and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection. However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment — and there might never be.”
Ryan said countries with high transmission rates, including Brazil and India, needed to brace for a big battle: “The way out is long and requires a sustained commitment.”
But before a vaccine can be perfected, scientists must unravel the mysteries of the disease. A key question that must be answered surrounds why some victims get severely sick while others recover quickly after being infected.
In certain patients, according to a flurry of recent studies, the virus appears to make the immune system malfunction.
Unable to marshal the right cells and molecules to fight off the invader, the bodies of the infected instead launch an entire arsenal of weapons — a misguided barrage that can wreak havoc on healthy tissues, experts said.
“We are seeing some crazy things coming up at various stages of infection,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University who led one of the new studies.
Researchers studying these unusual responses are finding patterns that distinguish patients on the path to recovery from those who fare far worse. Insights gleaned from the data might help tailor treatments to individuals, easing symptoms or perhaps even vanquishing the virus before it has a chance to push the immune system too far.
Even if a vaccine can be produced, evidence suggests that few Americans would be willing to take it. An opinion poll taken by Yahoo News and shows that now less than half of those questioned said they would take part in widespread vaccination efforts. Opposition to vaccination has been growing as the pandemic has continued unabated.
In early May, 55 percent of Americans said yes, they would get vaccinated. But that number shrank in each subsequent survey, slipping to 50 percent in late May and 46 percent in early July. Now just 42 percent of Americans plan to get vaccinated for COVID-19 — the smallest share to date.
The outlook for universal vaccination is clouded by political considerations: skepticism about medical authority and expertise (more common among Trump supporters), and suspicions (mostly among Democrats) that the administration is cutting corners on safety to rush a vaccine into production before the election. Together, these forces threaten to undermine COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S.
For a COVID-19 vaccine to actually stop the pandemic, scientists estimate that at least 60 percent of the population — and probably more like 75 or 80 percent — would need to be vaccinated, a number that depends on many factors, including the efficacy of the vaccine itself and how widely the virus has already spread.
Vaccines against different diseases vary in their effectiveness. The efficacy of the measles vaccine is 95 percent to 98 percent, which means that If 100 people who haven’t been exposed to the measles were given that vaccine, 95 to 98 of them wouldn’t get infected (on average). The efficacy of the flu vaccine generally ranges from 40 percent to 60 percent. The more effective a vaccine is, the fewer vaccinated people it takes to stop a pandemic.
Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it would be willing to approve a COVID-19 candidate vaccine with an efficacy of 50 percent. Such a Vaccine would help slow the virus’s spread, but it probably wouldn’t extinguish the U.S. epidemic — even if all Americans got vaccinated.
Cleansing wipes in short supply
Can’t find Clorox disinfecting wipes on the store shelf? You are not alone. Clorox CEO Benno Dorer says that grocery stores won't be fully stocked any time soon, because demand increased six-fold during the pandemic, according to CBS Los Angeles. The supply may return to normal sometime next year, he added.
July 25, 2020
Group says U.S. should reimpose tough virus restrictions
Faced with rising numbers of Coronavirus cases, 150 health professionals are urging government leaders to reimpose stricter regulations to stop virus spread.
"Tell the American people the truth about the virus, even when it’s hard. Take bold action to save lives — even when it means shutting down again," the letter, spearheaded by the nonprofit U.S. Public Interest Research Group, says.
Public health leaders argue in the letter that the U.S. reopened too quickly, nonessential businesses should close again, Americans should mostly stay home, and government officials need to invest more in testing, contact tracing, and personal protective equipment capacities.
"If you don’t take these actions, the consequences will be measured in widespread suffering and death," according to the letter addressed to President Donald Trump, federal officials and governors.
Since lifting strict regulations on non-essential businesses many states including California, Texas and Florida have seen surges in COVID-19 cases with many counties exceeding previous records for reported infections per day.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported 3.82 million total cases (57,777 new) nationwide and 140,630 deaths (473 new). In total, more than half of US states and New York City reported more than 40,000 total cases, including California with more than 375,000 cases; Florida with more than 350,000; Texas with more than 325,000; New York City with more than 200,000; and 8 additional states with more than 100,000. The US is #4 globally in terms of per capita daily incidence.
Virus sends more Americans to the unemployment line
The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose last week for the first time since March, as 1.4 million additional jobless workers joined the ranks of those needing government assistance.
The uptick ended a 15-week stretch in which initial weekly claims steadily declined. In little more than four months, a staggering 52.7 million sought unemployment aid for the first time.
The economy was starting to unthaw as businesses welcomed back customers after closing in the spring to dampen the spread of COVID-19. But a surge in cases led several states, including California and Texas, to order many businesses to shut once again, slowing rehiring and fueling more layoffs.
"The labor market remains in a precarious place as COVID-19 cases surge in some parts of the country and stricter measures are adopted in response,"
The latest wave of applicants may see payments significantly lower than what unemployed Americans received in recent months, as an additional $600 a week provided by the federal government ends this weekend.
“There is one clear takeaway from this morning’s unemployment insurance report. Not extending the weekly $600 benefit supplement would be unconscionable,” Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, said in a statement. "Families will be evicted from their homes, poverty will soar, children will go hungry, businesses will shutter and the economy will tank."
The economic downturn has been especially hard on the restaurant industry where restaurants were limited to take out food only to avoid indoor dining.
Sixty percent of restaurants that closed because of the pandemic will not reopen, according to a quarterly bulletin released this week by Yelp, the review service.
Chinese drug could offer some immunity.
A drug being tested by scientists at China's prestigious Peking University could not only shorten the recovery time for those infected, but even offer short-term immunity from the virus, researchers say.
Sunney Xie, director of the university's Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics, told AFP that the drug has been successful at the animal testing stage.
"When we injected neutralizing antibodies into infected mice, after five days the viral load was reduced by a factor of 2, 500," said Xie.
"That means this potential drug has (a) therapeutic effect."
The drug uses neutralizing antibodies -- produced by the human immune system to prevent the virus infecting cells -- which Xie's team isolated from the blood of 60 recovered patients.
A study on the team's research, published Sunday in the scientific journal Cell, suggests that using the antibodies provides a potential "cure" for the disease and shortens recovery time.
July 18, 2020
Virus springs inmates from prison
More than 8,000 California state prison inmates will be released early to stop a major outbreak of Coronavirus among the incarcerated.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said the release will take place on a rolling basis and will involve convicts that were scheduled to be freed soon and others who are at high risk of complications if they contract the virus.
COVID-19 inmate cases totaled 2,286 and 31 deaths throughout the state’s penal system as of July 17. Seven hundred nineteen prison staff have been infected but none have died.
Initial releases will involve inmates with less than 180 days left on their sentence or 4,800 people. Others with less than a year to serve or who live in one of eight highly infected prisons will have their cases reviewed.
Prisoners serving time for domestic violence or other violent crimes will not be eligible along with convicts who need to register as sex offenders and those considered high risk for committing violent crimes once set free.
While health experts and prisoner advocates applauded the move, many said it still was not enough to curb a fast-moving outbreak inside California’s chronically overcrowded prisons. The institutions currently hold 123% of their design capacity.
As of Wednesday, about 104,725 individuals remained imprisoned in California’s 35 institutions. Nearly 20,000 people would need to be released just to reach 100% capacity.
Those who are aged 30 or older and meet the criteria will be immediately eligible for release, prison officials said. Those 29 and under will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, taking into account factors like medical risk and time served.
Additional releases will include people who are at high risk of dying if they get the coronavirus, including people who are over 65 or have chronic health conditions or respiratory illnesses
Newsom’s decision was influenced by a major virus outbreak at San Quentin prison near San Francisco. Thirteen hundred inmates have been infected along with 205 staff members. Seven inmates died of what officials suspected to be COVID-19 complications, including men on Death Row.
Heartburn drugs tied to higher coronavirus risk
Common heartburn drugs may be tied to a greater risk of the Coronavirus, researchers have found. The class of drugs known as proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) that include omeprazole (Prilosec), lansoprazole (Prevacid), pantoprazole (Protonix), and esomeprazole (Nexium) work by stopping the stomach from producing too much acid.
Researchers conducted a survey of more than 53,000 people, including nearly 4,000 who said they had tested positive for COVID-19. They found that those taking a PPI once a day had more than a two-fold higher risk of coronavirus infection, and people taking them twice a day had more than a three-fold higher risk than those not using the medicines, according to the study led by Dr. Brennan Spiegel of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
But the study only shows a correlation and does not prove that PPIs caused the increase in coronavirus infections. "Further studies examining the association between PPIs and COVID-19 are needed," Spiegel's team said.
Ivy League cancels fall sports
There will be no football at the nation’s toniest colleges this fall due to the Coronavirus. Officials representing the Ivy League said they are cancelling fall sports to avoid an outbreak of the disease caused by large crowds at stadiums and other venues. The decision affects eight institutions: Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth and Cornell Universities, plus the University of Pennsylvania.
Some fall sports may be postponed until the spring semester, officials said. Other Division I schools were waiting to see what the Ivy League would do before deciding how to alter their sports programs. Many Division II and Division III schools have already terminated fall sports for 2020.
July 5, 2020
Virus may not have started in China
The Coronavirus may not have begun in China, one scientist believes.
Dr. Tom Jefferson, senior associate tutor at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM), at Oxford University and visiting professor at Newcastle University, argues that there is growing evidence that the virus was elsewhere before it emerged in Asia.
Last week, Spanish virologists announced they had found traces of the disease in samples of waste water collected in March 2019, nine months before the coronavirus disease was seen in China. The virus was thought to have emerged in the city of Wuhan where some of the first victims had frequented a so called “wet market” where exotic live animals were slaughtered and sold.
Italian scientists have also found evidence of coronavirus in sewage samples in Milan and Turin, in mid-December, many weeks before the first case was detected, while experts have found traces in Brazil in November.
Jefferson believes that many viruses lie dormant throughout the globe and emerge when conditions are favorable. It also means they can vanish as quickly as they arrive.
"Where did Sars 1 go? It’s just disappeared," he said "So we have to think about these things. We need to start researching the ecology of the virus, understanding how it originates and mutates.
"I think the virus was already here, here meaning everywhere. We may be seeing a dormant virus that has been activated by environmental conditions.”
"Strange things like this happened with Spanish Flu. In 1918 around 30 per cent of the population of Western Samoa died of Spanish Flu, and they hadn’t had any communication with the outside world.
"The explanation for this could only be that these agents don’t come or go anywhere. They are always here and something ignites them, maybe human density or environmental conditions, and this is what we should be looking for."
Jefferson believes that the virus may be transmitted through the sewage system or shared toilet facilities, not just through droplets expelled by talking, coughing and sneezing.
Writing in Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper Jefferson and Professor Carl Henegehan, Director of the CEBM, call for an in-depth investigation similar to that carried out by John Snow in 1854, which showed cholera was spreading in London from an infected well in Soho.
Exploring why so many outbreaks happen at food factories and meatpacking plants could uncover major new transmission routes, they believe. It may be shared toilet facilities coupled with cool conditions that allow the virus to thrive..
"These outbreaks need to be investigated properly with people on the ground one by one. You need to do what John Snow did. You question people, and you start constructing hypotheses that fit the facts, not the other way around."
July 3, 2020
Virus makes overwhelming comeback
The Coronavirus is making a frightening comeback in the United States. The number of confirmed cases per day climbed to an all-time high of more than 50,000 on Thursday, with the infection curve rising in 40 of 50 states.
“What we've seen is a very disturbing week,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious-disease expert, said in a livestream with the American Medical Association.
The surge comes as western states such as Texas and California had begun reopening businesses, entertainment centers and other public facilities following lower numbers of infections and virus-related hospitalizations.
The surge has been blamed in part on Americans not covering their faces or following other social distancing rules. Fauci warned that if people don't start complying, “we're going to be in some serious difficulty.”
The U.S. recorded 50,700 new confirmed cases, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. That represents a doubling of the daily total over the past month and is higher even than what the country witnessed during the most lethal phase of the crisis in April and May, when the New York metropolitan area was easily the worst hot spot in the U.S.
All but 10 states are showing an upswing in newly reported cases over the past 14 days, according to data compiled by the volunteer COVID Tracking Project. The outbreaks are most severe in Arizona, Texas and Florida, which together with California have reclosed or otherwise clamped back down on bars, restaurants and movie theaters over the past week or so.
The surge comes as Americans head into a Fourth of July holiday that health officials warn could add fuel to the outbreak by drawing big crowds. Many municipalities have canceled fireworks displays.
In Texas, where new cases in the past two weeks have swelled from about 2,400 a day to almost 8,100 on Wednesday, the positive case rate ballooned from 8% to 14.5%. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the wearing of masks across most of the state after refusing until recently to let even local governments impose such rules.
Abbott said in a video posted on Twitter that the state’s lower infection rate and case counts after his stay-home order in April might have led some to think the “coast was clear.”
In California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the closure of restaurants, bars, wineries movies theaters and museums in 19 of the state’s counties where virus cases have seen an upsurge. Most are in the state’s Central Valley and other agricultural areas. By Wednesday, state health officials had recorded 237,068 cases of COVID-19 and 6,152 deaths.
Newsom is recommending that the affected counties cancel planned fireworks displays and other public events that draw large crowds. Californians should also avoid holding large traditional backyard barbecues for friends and family where social distancing may be hard to enforce.
During the holiday state agents will target businesses that are “thumbing their nose” at state imposed restrictions and putting the public at risk.
The U.S. has reported at least 2.7 million cases and more than 128,000 dead, the highest toll in the world. Globally there have been 10.7 million confirmed cases and over 517,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins’ count. The true toll is believed to be significantly higher, in part because of limited testing and mild cases that have been missed.
Other countries are also reporting an upswing in cases.
“We have now entered a new and treacherous phase in the life cycle of this pandemic,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa warned in a broadcast to the nation, which recorded more than 8,100 new infections, a one-day record, and has the biggest caseload on the continent.
India, the world’s second-most populous country with more than 1.3 billion people, has reported nearly 100,000 new cases in the past four days alone.
June 25, 2020
U.S. may have up to 20 million infected
The actual number of Americans infected with the Coronavirus may be as high as 20 million, according to a top government health official.
"Our best estimate right now is that for every case that's reported, there actually are 10 other infections," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield said, according to NBC news.
The estimate comes from looking at blood samples across the country for the presence of antibodies to the virus. For every confirmed case of COVID-19, 10 more people had antibodies, Redfield said.
Currently, there are 2.3 million COVID-19 cases reported in the U.S. The CDC's new estimate pushes the actual number of coronavirus cases up to at least 23 million.
"This virus causes so much asymptomatic infection," Redfield said. "The traditional approach of looking for symptomatic illness and diagnosing it obviously underestimates the total amount of infections."
The estimation comes amid rises in cases across the Southeast and Western U.S.
Infections set a record single-day count of 45,557 Wednesday. That put pressure on hard-hit states like Texas to take action.
State officials there announced that the next phase of reopening would be temporarily halted after the Lone Star State saw a 4.6% rise in cases totaling more than 5,500, along with more than 4,300 hospitalized patients.
Gov. Greg Abbott also halted all essential surgeries in four of the hardest-hit counties — which include the cities of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin — in a sign that the state’s hospital capacity is becoming increasingly strained. The move mimics steps taken in New York and New Jersey during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The surge in hospitalizations is worrying local health officials, including those in the Texas Medical Center who warned ICU-bed capacity would be breached on Thursday.
California and Florida are also seeing large daily spikes in the number of infections. California outdid its previous single-day high with 7,149 cases reported on Tuesday, according to state Department of Public Health. The previous record, set the day before, was just more than 5,000. Hospitalization and ICU rates due to the virus are also at an all-time high in the state.
The surge comes just as officials in some of the state’s largest cities are beginning to lift restrictions put in place to stop the disease. San Francisco will begin reopening beauty salons, restaurants and museums on June 29 on orders of Mayor London Breed.
Disney is delaying the phased reopening of Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, company representatives said on Wednesday. The parks are in the southern California city of Anaheim and the greater Los Angeles area has been a hotbed of virus cases recently.
In Florida, the state reported 5,511 new cases on Tuesday, the highest number in a single day. Gov. Ron DeSantis has attributed the rise to "testing more" but health officials said community transmission is still playing a role as the state reopens.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the virus is spreading at private gatherings in homes, and more young people are testing positive. Another source of rising virus numbers can be due to outbreaks at some state prisons, he said.
Counties that don't enforce health orders that aim to halt the spread could see state funding withheld, the governor added.
“California has a responsibility and obligation legally and otherwise to enforce those laws," Newsom said, “That will be an exception and we hope we never have to trigger that."
Whether the increased case load is linked to recent demonstrations over police brutality and racism is unclear. Health officials were concerned that large street gatherings would spread the virus as demonstrators marched close together ignoring social distancing.
"I do want to say that it's highly likely, given the increased numbers that we're seeing that some of this is in fact people who may have been in a crowded situation at one of the protests where there was spread," Los Angeles County Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said.
But in Alameda County, which saw extensive demonstrations and related violence recently, officials are not convinced.
There was still no "clear correlation between protest activities and increases in testing or positive cases" according to county health spokesperson Neetu Balram.
To view a comprehensive interactive display showing the chronology of the COVID-19 spread, visit the New York Times.
Trump cuts off Coronavirus research funds
In a purely political move, the Trump administration has cut off funding to the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) coronavirus research.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told Congress Tuesday about the cancellation. When asked why the money was eliminated, Fauci said he had no idea.
“Why was it cancelled? It was cancelled because the NIH was told to cancel it,” Fauci said. “I don’t know the reason, but we were told to cancel it.”
The Trump administration abruptly slashed funding in April for a research grant to the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, with more than $350,000 still in the group’s 2020 grant.
After the hearing, Fauci told Politico it was the White House that told the NIH to cancel this grant.
When contacted, the White House said it encouraged the defunding of the program, but ultimately it was up to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to make the final decision.
“The grantee was not in compliance with NIH’s grant policy,” an HHS spokesperson told Politico but declined to comment further on the decision.
The cancellation of the grant came after reports surfaced about EcoHealth Alliances’ research with a virologist at Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, who works with bat coronaviruses.
This lab became the center of a conspiracy theory with the U.S. government speculating that Covid-19 did not originate at a Wuhan wet market but instead accidently escaped from the institute.
During a coronavirus press briefing on 17 April, a reporter asked why the federal government would provide a grant to China amid this pandemic with rumors circulating about where the virus originated.
”We will end that grant very quickly,” President Donald Trump responded.
June 19, 2020
Virus on the rise world wide
The Coronavirus is not going away anytime soon. The World Health Organization issued a dire warning on Friday that the pandemic is accelerating. Thursday was a record day for new cases — more than 150,000 globally.
“The world is in a new and dangerous phase,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O.
“Many people are understandably fed up with being at home. Countries are understandably eager to open up their societies and their economies. But the virus is still spreading fast. It is still deadly, and most people are still susceptible,” he said.
Eighty-one nations worldwide have seen increasing numbers of cases for the past two weeks while only 36 are experiencing a decline, according to the New York Times.
The situation is especially dire in Brazil which recorded 54,771 cases in 24 hours. More than 48,954 Brazilians have died and the nation has made South America an epicenter for the virus. Health officials attributed the larger numbers to late reports from three states.
The administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been criticized for his response to the health emergency. Bolsanaro has dismissed the danger posed by the virus, undermined quarantine measures and told the nation to keep working to avoid an economic collapse.
In the United States, Florida and South Carolina are experiencing a surge of cases and deaths. Florida, reported 3,822 new cases on Friday beating a single-day record it set the previous day, and bringing its total number of cases close to 90,000. A total of 3,104 people have died.
South Carolina also reported on Friday a record of 1,081 new daily cases. It was the seventh time in 11 days that the state broke its single-day case record, and the state epidemiologist on Thursday pleaded with residents to wear masks and practice social distancing.
Other hard hit states include Arizona, Oklahoma and California which all reported their highest daily case numbers on Thursday. And Texas became the sixth state in the nation to surpass 100,000 cases, according to a New York Times database. Cases in the Lone Star State have doubled over the past month.
California Governor Gavin Newsom Thursday ordered that all Californians wear masks when shopping, taking public transit and seeking medical care. Previously use of masks had only been recommended. Those who violate the law could be charged with a misdemeanor but it’s unclear how the state will enforce the order.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis attributed the rise in cases to an increase of infections among people under 40, many of whom, he stressed, were asymptomatic and less likely to put a strain on hospitals.
He said an increase in testing across the state had also contributed to the rise, even as he cautioned that there had been an “erosion of social distancing among the younger population.” “As you test more, you find more,” he said.
The Trump administration has made a misleading claim that the recent jumps are a result of more aggressive testing.
Crowds were smaller than anticipated at a rally held by President Trump in Tulsa, Oklahoma Saturday but it was unclear if fears of contracting the virus from a large crowd was then reason. A lawsuit to stop the rally filed by local citizens was rejected by the Oklahoma Supreme Court on Friday.
Few in the crowd at the Bank of Oklahoma arena were wearing protective masks and were seated close to each other without social distancing.
Ship’s captain will not return
The captain of a Navy aircraft carrier who appealed for help in dealing with the Coronavirus outbreak aboard his ship will not be restored to his command, naval officials announced Friday.
Capt. Brett E. Crozier of the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt and his superior, Rear Adm. Stuart P. Baker, made poor decisions in handling the emergency, according to Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite and Adm. Michael M. Gilday, the chief of naval operations.
Crozier claimed that he was not getting cooperation from the Navy when some of the carrier’s crewmen tested positive and made his objections clear in a memo circulated to other officers.
The letter was leaked to the press and an embarrassed Trump administration fired Crozier. The ship’s captain was considered as hero by his crew for putting their lives above his career.
The controversy was further exacerbated by then-acting Navy Secretary Thomas B. Modley, who flew to the carrier and denounced Crozier in a profanity-laced tirade. Modley resigned the next day..
Baseball clubs close training facilities
Two teams, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Toronto Blue Jays have shut down their Florida training facilities after players tested positive for COVID-19. Five players and three staff members of the Phillies were affected while one of the Blue Jays caught the virus. The Tampa Bay Lightning of the National Hockey League also closed its training after three players and several staff members tested positive for the virus.
Florida was considered as a site for Major League BaseballJune 10, 2020
Virus grows in rural America
As rates of Coronavirus infection drop in urban areas, the virus is working its way into small-town America.
Since the start of June, 14 states and Puerto Rico have recorded their highest-ever seven-day average of new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, according to data tracked by The Washington Post: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Carolina, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.
The pandemic’s first wave burned through dense metro hubs such as New York City, Chicago and Detroit. But the highest percentages of new cases are coming from much smaller communities.
Coronavirus cases in counties with fewer than 60,000 people is part of the trend of new infections appearing in the nation’s rural communities. Many rural clinics have been hit by a loss of revenue during the pandemic and may not be able to handle the outbreaks, experts warn.
As of Monday, at least 112,000 people in the United States have died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, with almost 2 million cases of the virus reported.
Recent nationwide protests against racism and police violence could spark another rise in Coronavirus exposure as thousands of demonstrators took to the streets without wearing masks or observing social distancing.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is concerned that the protests could lead to a spike in cases. “It’s a perfect set up for further spread of the virus in the sense of creating these blips which might turn into some surges,” Fauci admitted on a Washington D.C. radio station this week..
Members of the Washington, D.C., National Guard have already tested positive for coronavirus since being deployed on May 31 to help deal with mass demonstrations and rioting in the nation’s capital.
June 7, 2002
COVID-19 is not becoming more dangerous, expert says
Analysis of Coronavirus strains has revealed that the virus has not mutated to become more severe or easily transmitted, a leading health authority said this week.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical Lead for the World Health Organization WHO COVID-19 response, indicated that the genomic analysis has not identified any genetic changes to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that would suggest an increase in transmissibility or disease severity. She emphasized that increased cases of COVID-19 could result if the public becomes complacent or tired of social distancing restrictions.
Six hundred hospital workers have died from Coronavirus
More than 600 health workers nationwide have died from COVID-19 according to a survey taken by two media organizations
Lost on the Frontline is a project launched by Britain’s Guardian newspaper and Kaiser Health News that aims to count, verify and memorialize every healthcare worker who dies during the pandemic.
The tally includes doctors, nurses and paramedics, as well as crucial healthcare staff such as hospital janitors, administrators and nursing home workers.
The project has now published the names and obituaries for more than 100 workers. A majority of the victims were people of color, mostly African American and Asian/Pacific Islander.
There is no other comprehensive accounting of US healthcare workers’ deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has counted 368 Covid deaths among healthcare workers, but acknowledges its tally is an undercount.
Many of the deaths occurred because hospital employees were forced to reuse masks countless times amid widespread equipment shortages. Others had only trash bags for protection. Some deaths have been met with employers’ silence or denials that they were infected at work.
Some turning to harmful products to fight off the virus
Americans are putting bleach on their food and other risky practices to ward off the Coronavirus, officials of the nation’s premier health agency said this week.
In a survey published by the Centers for Disease Control Friday, 39% of 502 respondents reported engaging in “non-recommend, high-risk practices,” including using bleach on food, applying household cleaning or disinfectant products to their skin and inhaling or ingesting such products.
The agency also found many people had limited knowledge of how to safely prepare and use cleaning products and disinfectants. Only 23% responded that room temperature water should be used to dilute bleach and 35% said that bleach should not be mixed with vinegar.
More surprisingly, only 58% of respondents knew bleach shouldn’t be mixed with ammonia, which creates chloramine, a harmful gas.
The CDC said the survey was conducted after poison centers reported a sharp increase in calls. “They’re getting overaggressive in cleaning,” said Michele Caliva, administrative director of the Upstate New York Poison Center.
Callers have mixed cleaning products, sprayed disinfectant on bread wrappers and wondered if they can eat the bread, bathed their kids in bleach solutions and just generally failed to follow label directions, she said.
One caller even asked how she was supposed to drink a cleaning product after President Donald Trump made a comment about drinking disinfectant, which triggered several states to issue a warning against dangerous disinfectant use.
May 27,2020
Virus deaths hit record high
America’s Coronavirus death toll exceeded 100,000 Wednesday, proof that the pandemic continues to haunt this nation even as most states are lifting many restrictions designed to keep people safe.
By Wednesday afternoon, confirmed cases of COVID-19 totaled 1,698,581 and 100,276 American had died of virus-related illness. Some experts say that statistic may be underestimating the real number of victims who died at home or who could not be identified due to lack of testing for the illness.
Evidence of a mysterious pneumonia surfaced in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year which would later be identified as the Coronavirus and its associated illness COVID-19.
The first U.S. death was reported in Seattle on Feb 29 but evidence has since been unearthed proving that at least two U.S. victims died before that and may have infected as early as January.
On March 11, The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic and two days later President Donald Trump declared a national emergency.
Schools, retail stores, office buildings, sporting events and other institutions considered non-essential were shut down to prevent people from congregating and spreading the infection. Grocery and hardware stores were allowed to remain open as were banks though customers were required to wear masks and stand six feet apart to prevent contagion.
Unemployment skyrocketed reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Faced with near total economic collapse, Congress approved a bill giving most Americans $1,200 each to pay for rent and other expenses they could not afford while being off the job.
From the beginning, the nation’s response was haphazard, confused and lacking any effective coordination from the White House.
Medical personnel lacked clothing to protect them while treating infected patients and hospitals did not have enough ventilators for the gravely ill. Individual states had to bid on the open market for needed supplies even against the federal government itself when the national emergency stockpile began to dry up.
The nationwide response quickly took on a partisan tone with Republicans insisting that lockdown measures be lifted soon to get the economy moving again. States ruled by Republican governors like Florida and Georgia were among the last to institute total lockdowns and conservative groups –encouraged by right wing media and Trump-have been staging demonstrations demanding that the lockdowns end.
Trump’s White House Coronavirus advisory group issued a series of guidelines encouraging states to reopen only after the number of virus cases had declined for two weeks and the state had adequate testing to identify new outbreaks.
The next morning, Trump encouraged his supporters to essentially disregard the guidelines and “liberate” states ruled by Democratic governors. He has since declined to wear a protective mask in public and has belittled former Vice President Joe Biden and a reporter for wearing facial protection.
States have been slowly easing rules as the number of new virus cases plateaus or begins to decline. Even though the outlook has improved slightly, health experts insist Americans must continue social distancing and other safety routines to avoid a virus resurgence.
But that may be difficult. On the Memorial Day weekend, beaches throughout the nation were crowded with patrons who stood close to one another and did not wear masks.
Fauci says drug won’t work
President Donald Trump may be taking a medication to ward off Coronavirus, but the nation’s best known doctor says it won’t do any good.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House Coronavirus task force became the first official to say that hydroxychloroquine is not an effective treatment for the virus based on available data.
"The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy," Fauci — the U.S. government's top infectious disease expert — said on CNN.
But he stopped short of calling for an outright ban of the drug, which Trump said he was taking last week as a preventative measure after a top White House aide was diagnosed with the coronavirus.
Global death toll rises
As people throughout the world wait to get a lifesaving coronavirus vaccine, the pandemic shows no sign of letting up.
The global death toll reached 2 million on Friday with 93 million victims having contracted the virus since the pandemic began in early 2020. The United States leads the world, with more than 23 million infections and close to four million deaths (see chart below).
The nation is averaging 240,000 new cases per day.
Health officials says the disease’s rapid spread can be attributed to people not adhering to safety measures such as wearing masks or avoiding crowds.
But several new mutated viral strains, which are much more infectious, are circulating throughout Europe and at least one had been discovered in the U.S.
The new mutation was at first discovered in Britain but has spread to 23 other nations. More than 230 million Europeans are living in government-ordered lockdowns.
And things are not likely to get better soon. Distribution of vaccines manufactured by two major drug companies has been chaotic in the United States as a disjointed system of local health departments struggles to immunize millions of Americans.
At the beginning of the week, officials of the Trump administration announced that a large batch of vaccines would be released and urged states to begin inoculating Americans 65 years of age and older.
To date, more than 10 million people have received at least one of two doses required to build up immunity to the virus. These have been mostly given to health workers, emergency services personnel and patients in nursing homes. The feds had hoped to inoculate up to 20 million people by the end of 2020.
The announcement created soaring demand, but state officials learned later that the additional stockpile contained only enough vaccines for those who have received their first shot.
In California, hospitals and health systems were deluged with calls from seniors eager to get vaccinated. Members of the Kaiser Permanente health system, one of the state’s largest, had to endure four-hour waits on a phone line designed to handle vaccine appointments. Kaiser will reportedly begin inoculating seniors 65 and other on Monday.
Phone lines for another health system completely collapsed and a third system informed patients that they could get a vaccine only if they were at least 75 years old.
A federal spokesman said 13 million doses are available for states to distribute as first and second shots but many have not ordered the full amount they are entitled to.
Meanwhile most Americans will have to wait and health agencies will do what they can despite a lack of coordination.
“I think states have been doing their best to plan with whatever information they can get from the feds on expected future allocations and then revising those plans if they get less,’’ said Dr. Marcus Plesia, the chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
“What is more concerning is that public expectations have been raised and limited supply may lead to significant disappointment.”
January 12, 2020
Order will require that people 65 and older get innoculated
A flood of vaccine will soon begin flowing to states as federal officials try to stop the recent uptick in Coronavirus cases and deaths.
Health Secretary Alex Azar announced Tuesday that all available doses will be released immediately and told state health officials to begin vaccinating all people over the age of 65 and those with health conditions that make them more at risk for virus-related death.
The announcement is a major policy shift for the Trump administration which had been holding back much of the vaccine so that Americans who have received the first of two required doses would get the second injection in a timely manner.
So far, the vaccine has been distributed only to medical personnel, first responders and nursing home residents.
Azar and others had criticized an identical proposal by President-elect Joe Biden because, they said, it would jeopardize the flow of vaccine supplies and the timely application of a second shot.
Both vaccines authorized in the United States require two doses: 21 days apart for the one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, and 28 days apart for the one from Moderna.
More than 9 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 151,000 have been fully vaccinated, according to the New York Times.
But more than 375,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and daily deaths are now topping 4,000 nationwide. Azar said the change in policy “reflects the urgency of the situation we face.”
January 10, 2020
Rioters likely to spread COVID-19
The violent takeover of the U.S. capitol by followers of President Donald Trump will likely cause more coronavirus cases, the nation’s top health official said this week.
Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Sacramento Bee that the sudden insurrection on Wednesday will spread the disease not only to the rioters, but to members of Congress and law enforcement caught up in the event.
“I do think you have to anticipate that this is another surge event. You had largely unmasked individuals in a non-distanced fashion who were all through the capitol,” he said.
“Then these individuals all are going in cars and trains and planes going home all across the country right now, ‘’he continued. “This is an event that will have public health consequences.”
Three members of the House of Representatives have tested positive since the siege. Brad Schneider, Bonnie Coleman Watson and Pramila Jayapal, all Democrats, said they were infected while huddled in a secure location with other Congress members who did not wear masks during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“Today, I am now in strict isolation, worried that I have risked my wife’s health and angry at the selfishness and arrogance of the anti-maskers who put their own contempt and disregard for decency ahead of the health and safety of their colleagues and our staff,” Schneider said.
On Sunday, Representative Chuck Fleischmann, Republican of Tennessee, who was also in protective isolation at the Capitol during the siege, said that he had tested positive for the virus after being exposed to his roommate, Representative Gus Bilirakis of Florida, also a Republican.
The pandemic shows no signs of letting up. The nation reported 4,000 virus- related deaths on Thursday, the highest daily total so far.
Those numbers are likely to increase, possibly reaching as high as 5,000 fatalities daily. Redfield said.
“We haven’t hit the peak of the current surge. Clearly the mortality we are seeing as many of us are trying to stress is more than we saw on Pearl Harbor and 9/11 over and over again. That’s the state of the pandemic unfortunately we are at right now.”
Individuals gathering indoors during the holidays without masks or other safeguards are fueling the rise in virus cases.
Since Jan. 4, 13,500 additional Americans have died of COVID 19.
That’s higher than the total number of dead after the Pearl Harbor attacks of World War II, casualties during the D-Day landings, the 9/11 attacks and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire combined, according to USA Today.
Vaccine effective against new forms of COVID-19.
A vaccine now being circulated by the Pfizer and BioNTech drug companies is effective against some mutated forms of the coronavirus, company officials said Friday.
The announcement was good news to the scientific community but experts said the virus could still create some dangerous strains.
“It’s a step in the right direction, ‘’said Dr. John Brooks, chief medical officer for the Centers for Disease Control pandemic response. “I’m hoping that the additional work that comes out in the future will fall in line with that finding.”
The mutated strain was discovered in Britain during December and has since turned up in 45 countries, including the United States. It is not more potent than the current viral versions spreading across the world but is thought to be more contagious.
Virus puts strain on California resources
Hospitals throughout California are having a difficult time keeping up the growing number of COVID-19 patients and deaths.
Hospitals are running out of space in intensive care units where critically ill patients are treated.
In Los Angeles County and the state’s San Joaquin Valley, ICU units are already at capacity. Ambulance crews are being told to cut back on the use of oxygen when transporting patients and not to being in people who have no chance of surviving, according to the Los Angeles Times.
With intensive care capacity under 15 percent at most hospitals, the San Francisco Bay Area remains under a curfew and lockdown which began in early December.
Conditions may get worse soon because most victims now hospitalized were infected during the Thanksgiving holidays but cases caused by interpersonal contact during the Christmas and New Years holidays have yet to show up.
Dec. 24, 2020
Pandemic numbers grow even as vaccine arrives
While there may be light at the end of the tunnel, the near term outlook for the global coronavirus pandemic is dark and foreboding.
To date, the nation has 18.3 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 324,000 deaths. Another 3,401 Americans perished Wednesday, the second highest total on record, according to Johns Hopkins University. The nationwide death toll during the previous seven days approached 19,000. (see below)
Public health officials are worried that the casualty rate will go even higher as people gather for the Christmas holiday on Friday. They are urging the public to abandon traditional family events and stay home to avoid becoming infected through close contact.
The situation is especially dire in California where intensive care units at many hospitals are nearing or at capacity. Field hospitals are being set up to handle the overflow.
“We’re struggling to add capacity for COVID patients as we speak,” said Greg Adams, Chief Executive of Kaiser Permanente. Sixteen of the Kaiser system’s 36 hospitals were over capacity in intensive care and four others reached or were nearing capacity by Wednesday.
California reported more than 62,000 new coronavirus cases on Monday and 372 deaths on Tuesday. That was a substantial increase from the previous week when virus fatalities averaged 233 victims daily.
While infection rates in the San Francisco Bay Area were dipping slightly authorities are bracing for another surge after Christmas.
“I must stress that we have a long way to go,’’ said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “Gathering for the holidays outside of your household need to be avoided at all costs.”
Authorities continue to enforce a strict lockdown including a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew for all non-essential activities. An order limiting the number of shoppers to only 20 percent of a store’s capacity has made holiday shopping much more difficult.
Shoppers waited for more than an hour to enter one Oakland grocery store Wednesday and waits are expected to be even longer on Christmas Eve.
Despite the current hardships, Americans can take heart from the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine which is now being given to hospital staff and “first responder” personnel like police officers and firefighters.
The vaccine’s manufacturer, Pfizer and BioNTech announced this week that they have agreed to supply 100 million doses of the drug to the United States. A total of 200 million doses should be available by July of 2021, according to reports.
After months of negotiating, Congress has passed a multi-billion dollar funding bill designed to bring economic relief to out of work Americans and small businesses which have been hard hit by virus-related lockdowns.
But President Trump is holding up the legislation because he favors stimulus payments of $2,000 per person rather than the $600 payment Congress approved.
Virus mutation breaks out in U.K.
A mutated version of COVID-19 has broken out in the United Kingdom and officials are concerned that it may be more contagious than current forms of the virus.
Discovery of the new version promoted British prime minister to impose stricter lockdown measures during the Christmas holidays while officials in Germany and the Netherlands have banned travel from the U.K. A pair of students who returned to Hong Kong this week tested positive for the new strain as well as one person in Italy who had not been to Britain. A total of 50 countries have banned flights from Britain due to the outbreak.
Scientists say the mutation is one of many variations that have occurred as the virus has spread around the world. It’s not a superbug, they insist, and would not be impervious to the new COVID-19 vaccines now being distributed.
But evidence suggests that it does spread more rapidly. The overall number of coronavirus cases has spiked in areas of southern England where the mutated virus has been found. Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College in London, said the new mutation spreads 50 to 70 percent faster than other variants.
December 10, 2020
Vaccine gets important approval
As the coronavirus continues to ravage the nation, the first important steps towards defeating the pandemic were taken Thursday.
After a lengthy hearing, a committee of vaccine scientists recommended distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine created by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
If the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the vaccine, inoculations could begin within a few days among health workers and nursing home residents. More than 20 million people will be treated in the first round of distribution, officials have said.
The approval amounted to an “emergency use authorization” requested by the drug companies to get the vaccine to the public has soon as possible. Approvals normally take more time, but F.D.A. officials said the companies did not short circuit the process by releasing a product that was not adequately tested for safety.
The vaccine cannot come fast enough as the U.S. continues to report record virus infections and deaths. More than 3,000 Americans died Wednesday and health experts expect the surge to continue as people infected during the Thanksgiving holidays turn up in emergency rooms.
Many states, including California, have instituted new strict quarantine rules to stop the virus spread. On Thursday, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam approved a midnight to 5 a.m. curfew in his state.
But the vaccine is not without risk for some people. Officials in the first nation to distribute the drug -the United Kingdom- reported that a pair of health workers became sick after receiving their shots earlier this week.
The pair had a history of allergic reactions and each of the victims carried emergency adrenaline auto injectors as a precaution against anaphylactic reactions.
British health officials recommended that anyone with major allergic reactions to vaccines, medicine or food should avoid the inoculation.
Trump supporters get special treatment
Despite a shortage of an experimental drug used to treat coronavirus victims, supporters of President Donald Trump had no problem getting the medicine, according to the New York Times.
Trump received the monoclonal antibody cocktail made by Regeneron when he was hospitalized for COVID 19 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in October. Trump said he felt “great” after the treatment, and that Americans would soon get the drug free.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson also received the drug after being infected as did former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, also received the Regeneron drug after being hospitalized at Georgetown University Hospital this week.
December 8, 2020
Shutdown orders issued
As Americans celebrate the holiday season, the coronavirus is becoming an unwelcome guest at the festivities.
A new surge of infections, possibly caused by people attending Thanksgiving celebrations, is showing up throughout the nation. Faced with an alarming daily rise in cases and deaths, authorities are imposing shutdown orders.
On Dec. 2, the U.S. logged 14 million Covid-19 cases just hours after setting three grim records: the highest number of daily deaths, new infections and hospitalizations since the pandemic began.
The U.S. reported 2,777 coronavirus-related deaths on Dec. 2 alone, according to an NBC News tally. The country registered nearly 205,000 new cases of Covid-19 on the same day, a figure that comes just a month after the U.S. single-day record topped 100,000 cases for the first time.
Meanwhile, more people than ever are hospitalized. The Covid Tracking Project reported that 100,000 people were hospitalized across the country.
The pandemic has been widespread in California, where a record 34,931 COVID-19 cases were reported on Dec. 7. The nine county San Francisco Bay Area region reported more than 3,000 infections.
Of special concern is the state’s death toll which reached 800 last week including 65 victims in the Bay Area. Both totals were 80 percent higher than the previous week.
Hospitals are beginning to fill up with COVID-19 patients and Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a series of statewide shutdowns designed to keep intensive care units from being overwhelmed.
Under the order, indoor and outdoor dining is prohibited, museums, zoos and entertainment centers are shuttered and residents must stay home. Mixing with people from other households is forbidden. Californians can attend religious services and take part in protests if they are outside.
Newsom’s crackdown takes effect once regional hospitals are down to 15 percent of icu capacity. The order began Sunday in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California where critical care beds were down to 6.6 percent and 10.3 percent respectively.
Bay Area hospitals have not reached the state minimum, but health authorities in the nine county area imposed the restrictions anyway.
Retailers can remain open but must operate at only 20 percent of normal indoor capacity. This has caused lines to form outside businesses. Travel is also restricted and anyone coming into the state must quarantine in the hotel for a given period before being allowed to visit relatives.
Some Californians, including a few health authorities, have admitted the shutdowns are draconian but it’s unclear how far the state will go to enforce the restrictions.
November 23, 2020
As the number of coronavirus cases continues to reach record highs, vaccines to stop it are just around the corner.
On Monday, drug manufacturer Astra Zeneca announced that it’s ‘vaccine was 90 percent effective in preventing test subjects from becoming infected by COVID-19. This follows similar results from two other vaccines being created by other competing pharmaceutical firms.
Formulated with the aid of scientists at Britain’s Oxford University, the Astra Zeneca vaccine is inexpensive at $2.50 per dose and does not require elaborate cold storage while being distributed.
Officials at the other two companies, Pfizer and Moderna have applied for permission to distribute their drugs on an emergency basis to help speed up the process of inoculating some 20 million Americans.
The vaccine breakthroughs cannot come soon enough. According to USA Today, the United States has reported more daily coronavirus cases in the past 12 days than in any single month of the pandemic. The total reached 1,978,287 new infections, the newspaper reported.
November 21, 2020
Vaccine may be available next month
A vaccine to protect against the coronavirus may be ready for distribution by mid-December if federal authorities will permit it.
Representatives for the pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer Friday applied for permission to issue the company’s new vaccine on an emergency basis rather than wait for the long approval process by the U.S. Food and Drug administration.
Pfizer says its vaccine is more than 95 percent effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19. A competing firm, Moderna has made similar claims for its new anti-coronavirus drug.
Emergency approval would allow the companies to distribute the drug to select groups while their vaccines are going through the formal approval process.
If the approval is granted, about 20 million Americans-mostly health care workers and nursing home residents- could get the vaccines by mid-December, according to the New York Times.
Curfews ordered
Better get home before 10 p.m. now that authorities in at least two states have ordered overnight curfews to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced this week that beginning Saturday, Nov. 21, people cannot leave their homes between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. the following morning except for essential reasons. Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio issued a similar order which went into effect on Nov. 19.
Other cities that have imposed curfews include Pueblo, Colo. and Miami-Dade County Fla. Authorities in New York and Chicago are closing bars and restaurants at 10 p.m.
Public health authorities said the measures were necessary because people can contract the virus at late-night gatherings where they drink, sing or otherwise engage in close distance behavior.
November 18, 2020
Quarantine restrictions ordered
A devastating new wave of COVID-19 infections is forcing many states to reinstate restrictions imposed when the pandemic began earlier this year.
By Tuesday, the nation reported 11.2 million coronavirus cases and 247,000 deaths. Worldwide the toll has exceeded 55 million cases and 1.3 million deaths.
Evidence of the pandemic began to turn up around March. But by summer, a decline in the number of infections encouraged many U.S. governors to ease up on store closures and other quarantine plans.
All of that changed this fall as the pandemic has made a remarkable comeback. More than 1,000 Americans are dying each day and recent daily spikes have been higher than at any time during the summer. Hospitalizations of critically ill coronavirus victims are now approaching 70,000, a record for the year.
Public health experts predicted a second wave of infections in the fall as more people remain inside due to cold weather and some schools and colleges reopen.
They are urging people to avoid gathering in larger indoor groups during the traditional Thanksgiving holiday, according to Yahoo Finance.
“I would stay home. I would think about cancelling honestly,” said University of Alabama at Birmingham Associate Dean for Global Health Dr. Michael Saag.
“I know I sound like the Thanksgiving equivalent of Ebenezer Scrooge, but we are in the middle of the pandemic that is exponentially growing.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday announced a return of tough restrictions in 41 of the state’s counties following a 51 percent rise in virus cases in the last 10 days.
Indoor businesses including restaurants, gyms, museums and places of worship must close. Shopping malls and retail stores can remain open but must remain at 25 percent of customer capacity.
Similar restrictions are being adopted in other hard-hit states including Iowa, Ohio, West Virginia and Utah where residents are now required to wear a mask while in public. Those states are also governed by Republicans who have been reluctant to impose restrictions in light of quarantine criticism by President Donald Trump.
Trump has been reassuring the public that a coronavirus vaccine will be available soon, and on Monday the biotech firm Moderna reported that its vaccine is 95 percent effective at treating COVID-19 infections.
Earlier the pharmaceutical company Pfizer reported that its vaccine was 90 percent effective in clinical trials. But no timeline has been set for final approval of both medicines by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Trump’s refusal to cooperate with the incoming administration of President elect Joe Biden could increase the number of deaths by delaying planning and distribution of the vaccine, Biden said Monday.
October 28, 2020
Daily infection rate on the rise
As states relax restrictions aimed at stopping COVID-19, the number of new infections is rising at an alarming rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost 500,000 new cases of the coronavirus have been reported in the U.S. in the last seven days. Most states now have 100,000 total cases and several, including California, Texas and Florida, have 700,000 infections (see chart below). The outbreaks are straining the nation’s health care resources as many medical centers are nearing full capacity with the total number of hospitalized victims exceeding 41,000 nationwide.
Cleaning objects not necessary to stay safe
It may not be necessary to disinfect your groceries or the daily mail to avoid contacting the coronavirus, experts said this week.
According to the Washington Post, scientists agree that the virus is rarely passed through contact with tainted surfaces. Fearful Americans have been wiping down all items they buy or get delivered to avoid contact with the virus. But the public can ease up such stringent measures, said David Morens, senior adviser to pandemic expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“To the best of my knowledge in real life, scientists like me-an epidemiologist and a physician—and virologists basically don’t worry too much about these things.”
Officials at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agree and have updated their web page to read “spread from surfaces is not thought to be the common way” coronavirus is transmitted.
Studies, including research from Australia, have shown that virus particles can be detected on surfaces such as glass and stainless steel for up to 28 days. But such research is often conducted under experimental conditions and the presence of the virus doesn’t mean it could infect anyone because airflow, sunlight and heat all weaken COVID-19, he added.
“The amount of virus that can persist might not be the amount of virus that can affect you in a real-world environment.”
October 18, 2020
Virus cases on the rise again nationally
The coronavirus pandemic shows no sign of stopping. The United States now has more than 8 million infected citizens, an increase of more than 1 million in less than 30 days. The national death toll now stands at 218,000.
U.S. health officials reported 60,000 new infections on Wednesday, the highest daily total since Aug. 14.
Colder weather in many parts of the country, which is forcing people inside, may be one cause for the rise in infections. College students returning to campus maybe spreading the virus along with Americans who are tired of restrictive COVID-19 precautions, officials speculated.
More than 25 states have set records for new cases this month. The Midwest and Northeast have been especially hard hit with infections doubling in states such as Wisconsin, South Dakota and New Hampshire.
California remains the state with the most total cases followed by Texas, Florida, New York and Georgia. Those five states account for more than 40 percent of all reported COVID-19 cases in the nation. (See chart below)
With cases and positive test rates rising in recent weeks, New York City has closed businesses and schools in neighborhood hot spots despite protests from a small contingent of Orthodox Jews.
Prehistoric humans passed on deadly genes
Mankind’s prehistoric ancestors may have been responsible for some coronavirus deaths, according to a theory being promoted by a pair of European researchers.
The scientists have discovered that a strand of DNA that triples the risk of developing severe Covid-19 was passed on from Neanderthals to modern humans when both species joined around 50,000 years ago.
Today around 16 percent of Europeans and 50 percent of south Asians carry the gene.
The origins of the risk genes came to light when researchers in Sweden and Germany compared the DNA of gravely sick coronavirus patients with that of Neanderthals and their sister group, the Denisovans
The stretch of DNA that makes patients more likely to fall seriously ill closely matched that collected from a Neanderthal body in Croatia, according to Britain’s Guardian newspaper quoting the website, Nature.
“I almost fell off my chair because the segment of DNA was exactly the same as in the Neanderthal genome,” Hugo Zeberg, an assistant professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, told the Guardian.
Zeberg and his co-author, Svante Pääbo, director of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, suspect the Neanderthal genes have persisted in modern humans because they were once beneficial, perhaps helping to fight off other infections. Only now – when faced with a new infection – has their downside been exposed.
It is unclear how the genes may worsen COVID-19, but one gene plays a role in the immune response and another has been linked to the mechanism the virus uses to invade human cells.
“We are trying to pinpoint which gene is the key player, or if there are several key players, but the honest answer is that we don’t know which are critical in Covid-19,” Zeberg said.
October 2,2020
Trump hospitalized, given antibody drug
President Donald Trump is “fatigued” after contracting COVID-19 and is being treated with an experimental antibody cocktail to fight the illness, White House officials said Friday.
Trump and First Lady Melania Trump shocked the nation when they announced Thursday night on Twitter that they were infected with the potentially deadly coronavirus.
Both are in voluntary quarantine and Trump went to Walter Reed National Medical Center for tests Friday afternoon. Their son, Barron Trump, tested negative as have others in Trump’s inner circle including Vice President Mike Pence.
Earlier in the week, Hope Hicks, a senior advisor to the president, tested positive. Hicks had accompanied Trump to a political rally and to Cleveland on Tuesday, where he debated former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden and his wife tested negative for the disease and moderator Chris Wallace is awaiting test results.
Presidential physician Dr. Sean Conley said Trump, 74, “remains fatigued’’ but was in good spirits Friday. Trump received a drug that is still in clinical trials by the bio tech company Regeneron, Conley said.
Initial results suggest that Regeneron’s treatment can lower the level of the virus in the body when administered early in the course of an infection.
The president has cancelled all public appearances including a planned rally this weekend in Wisconsin.
In a brief video message the president tweeted shortly after arriving at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he looked tired. He declared that he is “doing very well” and suggested that he was visiting the hospital only as a precaution.
Health experts are not certain how Trump was exposed to the virus, but evidence points toward an appearance last weekend with his latest Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.
A guest at that event, the Rev. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame University, has tested positive along with Republican chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.
Trump’s exposure is a counterpoint to his often contemptuous attitude toward the virus and efforts aimed at stopping its spread. Public health experts have urged the public to wear face masks in public to avoid contamination, but the president has rarely been seen wearing one.
His political rallies draw large crowds of unmasked followers and Trump has sometimes been critical of shutdowns in states where the virus has taken a heavy toll.
Conley and other White House officials have reason to be concerned about Trump’s chances of recovery, because the president falls into a high risk category of coronavirus patients. Older men are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as women, because males produce a weaker immune response.
Obesity is another factor in the death of older male patients, experts have said. Trump, who does not hide his love of cheeseburgers, is overweight.
“If you don’t know anything about Donald Trump, just knowing that he‘s a male over 70, and appears to be overweight, right away you could say he’s in a high risk group,” said Michael Baker, a professor of global health at the University of Otego in Wellington, New Zealand.
But most patients, even those who are older, survive after being exposed, Baker added.
“The good news is that even people who have a number of risk factors on average, do well,” he said. ”Only a minority have illness and severe consequences.”
Trump now joins a club of global leaders who have contracted the virus. They include British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Brazilian President Jain Bolsanaro and Britain’s Prince Charles.
Academy award winning actor Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson also tested positive earlier this year while in Australia. All have recovered.
Since the pandemic began in this country eight months ago, 7.3 million Americans have been infected and more than 200,000 have died from COVID-19 related illness.
September 25,2020
U.S. virus deaths hit an all-time high
The United States passed a grim milestone in its fight against the coronavirus this week.
By Thursday, more than 203,000 Americans had died from virus related complications; the highest pandemic death rate in the world, according to John Hopkins University statistics. More than 7 million cases of COVID-19 have been documented in this nation since the virus was first discovered in March.
To stop the spread, states adopted extensive restrictions including social distancing to keep people at least six feet apart and mandatory wearing of masks to prevent coronavirus germs from being disseminated when infected victims talk to others. Companies and many public employers shut down entirely to prevent workers from passing the infection onto others. That has had a devastating effect on the economy, pushing unemployment to levels not seen since the Great Depression.
The precautions were controversial, sparking protests among conservative groups who claimed the restrictions violated their freedom. President Donald Trump has often been at the center of the upheaval often denouncing local government lockdown measures.
Critics have been especially vocal following revelations that he downplayed the virus threat after being told six months ago that COVID-19 was deadly. Trump said he did do to avoid creating a public panic.
Trump this week praised his administration’s response to the pandemic.
“We’ve done a phenomenal job,” he said. “Not just a good job, a phenomenal job.”
In late March, a coronavirus task force predicted that between 100,000 and 200,000 American would die even with stiff health mandates in place.
Coronavirus infection and death rates have declined since the pandemic began only to shoot up again in states where businesses reopened and children and college students have returned to the classroom.
Experts from the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation estimate that an additional 200,000 victims could die of COVID -19 by the end of the year. Public health authorities say the rate of infection could rise as more people stay indoors during the fall and winter. The medical system could be especially challenged as coronavirus cases continue during the annual flu season which normally begins around October.
Dogs are joining the virus fight
You might say that officials at Finland’s Helsinki airport are dogged in their determination to test travelers for the coronavirus.
They’re using trained dogs to sniff out the virus on airline passengers as they enter the country. The test is voluntary and takes 10 seconds. After passengers collect their luggage, they are asked to wipe the sweat off their necks and leave the cloth in a box. A trainer than puts the box behind a wall along with cans containing other scents.
If the dog senses a unique virus smell, the passenger is asked if he or she would be willing to get a conventional virus test at the airport’s health center.
Dogs are legendary for their acute sense of smell and can detect explosives, drugs and other illegal items in airline luggage. Other dogs throughout the world are capable of sniffing out cancer, diabetes and other diseases for diagnosis.
Other nations, including Britain, France and the United States are testing virus dogs. Finnish officials say if the pilot program proves successful, dogs could be used in retirement homes and other institutions to avoid unnecessary quarantines.
September 19,2020
Vaccine trials resume in Britain
A pharmaceutical company that halted its vaccine trials after a test subject became ill will resume testing in Britain, company officials said this week.
But AstraZeneca will not lift a halt on testing in other countries and a timeline for delivery of an effective vaccine to counteract the deadly coronavirus pandemic is still undetermined.
AstraZeneca Pfizer and Moderna are among the three companies that are currently testing their candidates in late-stage clinical trials in the United States.
All three have said they expect to have a vaccine ready — at least for high-priority groups — before the end of the year. On Sept 12 Pfizer repeated previous statements that it could have an answer about whether its vaccine works by the end of October.
Pfizer, said it was expanding the trial of its coronavirus vaccine to 44,000 people — a big increase from its previous goal of 30,000 — in an effort to recruit a more diverse group of participants and potentially cut down the time needed to get results from the trial.
But AstraZeneca did not offer any information to support the decision to partially resume trials and would not give any details about the illness of a patient that had led to the suspension.
A great deal of uncertainty remains about what happened to the unnamed patient, to the frustration of those avidly following the progress of vaccine testing. AstraZeneca, which is running the global trial of the vaccine it produced with Oxford University, said the trial volunteer recovered from a severe inflammation of the spinal cord and is no longer hospitalized. Severe side effects associated with any trial vaccine could place its development in jeopardy.
Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control told senators that even if a vaccine were available now, vaccinating enough Americans for widespread immunity could take six to nine months. He estimated that one could be available for limited use by the end of the year, and for wider distribution by the middle of 2021, echoing a timeline that other top health officials, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, had used in recent weeks.
During the hearing, Redfield also said that masks are “the most important, powerful public health tool we have” in fighting the pandemic.
He said universal mask use could bring the pandemic under control in a few months and said, “I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take a COVID vaccine"
September 11,2020
Vaccine trials halted after subject is sickened
An international drug company has stopped large scale trials of a coronavirus vaccine after a participant in the drug testing program developed a serious adverse reaction.
While it’s not known if the sickness was caused by the vaccine, the delay will allow manufacturer AstraZeneca to conduct a safety review. Company officials did not give a timeline for the investigation.
Clinical trials, in which thousands of volunteers are given the drug to measure the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing coronavirus infection, are being conducted by several drug companies.
AstraZeneca, working in conjunction with researchers at Britain’s Oxford University, was considered the front runner in the race with late stage clinical trials underway throughout the world. It was hoped that a vaccine could be ready by the end of the year. If the patient’s reaction was related to the vaccine, that timeline could delayed significantly.
President Donald Trump has said he would like to have a vaccine in play by Election Day, Nov 3. Critics have said that is unrealistic and that the drug must be proven safe before it can be given to the public.
On Tuesday, nine companies including AstraZeneca pledged to “Stand with science” and not release any drug that has not been thoroughly tested for safety and efficacy.
Grim pandemic forecast predicts rising coronavirus death rate
The U.S. coronavirus death toll could more than double by the end of the year, according to a forecast prepared by researchers at the University of Washington.
Researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation project that an additional 220,000 Americans will die of the virus over the next four months bringing the total to 410,000 victims.
That number could soar to 620,000 if the nation continues to reduce social distancing practices, the researchers said.
The only way to keep the death toll under 300,000 this year is for 95 percent of Americans to wear a mask when they leave home each day, according to the forecast. Currently only 45 percent of the U.S. public masks up daily.
Trump downplayed virus threat, author claims
Donald Trump deliberately downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic even after being informed of the infection’s deadly potential, author Bob Woodward claims in a pending book.
Trump told Woodward that “I always wanted to play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”
CNN released audio of Woodward’s March 19 conversation with the president which reaffirmed the statement. Woodward claims that Trump was informed about the dangers of COVID-19 weeks before the infection started killing Americans. In subsequent remarks, Trump told the public that the virus would disappear, and that it was no more serious than influenza.
After Democrats and other critics lambasted Trump for not sharing his knowledge of the virus threat, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted that the president has “always taken it (coronavirus) seriously.”
He was “expressing calm” and “embodied the American spirit of unity in the face of the pandemic,” she added.
August 19,2020
More children are contracting COVID-19
The number of children exposed to the Coronavirus has been steadily increasing since the pandemic began in March, according to health officials.
While children account for 22 percent of the nation’s total population, they comprise 7 percent of all virus cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
“Recent evidence suggests that children likely have the same or higher viral loads in their nasopharynx compared with adults and that children can spread the virus effectively in household and camp settings,” according to the center’s report.
Transmission of the virus may have been slowed by mandatory quarantine measures and school closures during spring and summer.
But with some schools reopening, the threat of further infection returns. Some teachers have opted to quit rather than be exposed, according to CNN.
“So if I’m put into a classroom with 30 or more kids, it’s a small room, there’s one exit, the ventilation isn’t that great for schools,” said Arizona teacher Matt Chicci, who quit his job.
Other school districts including most in California, have opted for “distance learning” with students connected to the classroom via the Internet.
In Georgia, where several school districts recently reopened, more than 1,000 students and adults have been forced into quarantine after contracting the virus or being exposed.
A 15-year-old Atlanta boy died from COVID-10 recently following the death of a 7-year-old child from Savannah. Health officials did not release information on how the teen caught the virus, but said he had other health conditions. On Aug. 15, the state reported 3,372 new virus cases and 96 deaths.
Georgia has had a total of 235,168 cases during the pandemic and 4,669 deaths.
North Paulding High School, where a photo of hallways filled with students went viral, reported 21 confirmed cases during the week of Aug. 8-14.
The school has now adopted online “virtual learning” but will bring students back on campus beginning Aug. 24.
Health officials have downplayed the risk of viral infection in children but the CDC report stresses that kids can develop severe complications once infected and that one in three is admitted to intensive care. That’s the same ratio as adults, according to the report.
Chinese find COVID-19 in imported food
Residents of two Chinese cities have found Coronavirus in imported frozen food, but American and global health authorities say there is nothing to worry about.
A sample taken from the surface of Brazilian chicken wings and packages of frozen Ecuadorian shrimp tested positive when opened in the city of Xian.
As cases of the virus increase throughout the world, there is concern that the virus may be passed through food or packaging. New Zealand officials, who previously said that they had stopped the pandemic in their country, are investigating whether several new cases may have arrived in foreign freight.
But experts are skeptical.
“People should not fear food, the packaging of food or the delivery of food,” said Mike Ryan of the World Health Organization.
In a joint statement, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug administration said “there is no evidence that people can contract COVID-19 from food or food packaging.”
Virus ancestors present in nature for four decades
Ancestors of the Coronavirus that is causing infection and death worldwide have likely been around for more than 40 years, a British researcher has found.
Present in bats, the COVID-19 virus has been capable of infecting humans through animal hosts for quite some time, researchers said. Their findings refute conspiracy claims that the viruses were concocted in a Chinese laboratory.
Writing in the journal Nature Microbiology, Prof. David Robertson of the University of Glasgow said the SARS-COV2 virus is genetically very close to the nearest known bat viruses but is separated by several decades.
“We really do need to understand where or how the virus has crossed into the human population. If we now believe there's this generalist virus circulating in bats, we need to get better at monitoring that,” he told the British Broadcasting Company.
The work suggests the need to look for emerging diseases in humans and to carry out more sampling within wild bat populations, if we are to prevent future pandemics, he said.
"If these viruses have been around for decades that means that they've had lots of opportunity to find new host species, including humans," said Prof Robertson.
The virus was first discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan but the method of infection from animals to humans has not been determined. One theory is that the disease was passed on when people ate infected wild animals like civets or pangolins.
August 12, 2020
Fall football season cancelled
Two more of college football’s conferences have cancelled fall games due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Officials of the Pac-12 which includes university teams in California, Oregon,
Washington, Arizona, Utah and Colorado announced Tuesday that the football season will be postponed to protect student athletes from the virus.
Games may resume in the spring, but there are no guarantees. Organizers of the Big Ten conference, which includes most major Midwestern universities, have also cancelled their fall football season.
The Pac-12 decision was universally expected. The league has multiple teams that would have difficulty starting practice this week because of local government restrictions. The virus has been especially impactful in California and Arizona, which houses six of the 12 schools.
Russians claim new virus preventative
Russia has approved a coronavirus vaccine but researchers are skeptical that it could be effective.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday that a COVID-19 vaccine has been developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, even though phase III trials of the vaccine had yet to be completed. Such trials involve giving thousands of people a vaccine or a placebo injection, and then following them to see if the vaccine prevents disease.
Scientists around the world have condemned the decision saying that it is premature. Giving the drug to the public before testing its safety could put many people at risk and harm global efforts to develop a quality vaccine, the researchers said.
More than 200 COVID-19 vaccines are in development worldwide and several are already in phase III trials, with more frontrunners slated to begin theirs soon. But researchers think that the earliest one of those vaccines could be approved is still months away.
August 5, 2020
Outlook for virus vaccine uncertain at best
Despite multiple efforts to develop a Coronavirus vaccine, there might never be a “silver bullet” to stop the pandemic, world health officials are warning.
More than 18.44 million people around the world are reported to have been infected with the disease and 698,023 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Some nations that thought they were over the worst of the pandemic are now experiencing a resurgence in cases.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan exhorted all nations to rigorously enforce health measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing, hand-washing and testing.
“The message to people and governments is clear: ‘Do it all’,” Tedros told a virtual news briefing from the U.N. body’s headquarters in Geneva. He said face masks should become a symbol of solidarity round the world.
“A number of vaccines are now in phase three clinical trials and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection. However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment — and there might never be.”
Ryan said countries with high transmission rates, including Brazil and India, needed to brace for a big battle: “The way out is long and requires a sustained commitment.”
But before a vaccine can be perfected, scientists must unravel the mysteries of the disease. A key question that must be answered surrounds why some victims get severely sick while others recover quickly after being infected.
In certain patients, according to a flurry of recent studies, the virus appears to make the immune system malfunction.
Unable to marshal the right cells and molecules to fight off the invader, the bodies of the infected instead launch an entire arsenal of weapons — a misguided barrage that can wreak havoc on healthy tissues, experts said.
“We are seeing some crazy things coming up at various stages of infection,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University who led one of the new studies.
Researchers studying these unusual responses are finding patterns that distinguish patients on the path to recovery from those who fare far worse. Insights gleaned from the data might help tailor treatments to individuals, easing symptoms or perhaps even vanquishing the virus before it has a chance to push the immune system too far.
Even if a vaccine can be produced, evidence suggests that few Americans would be willing to take it. An opinion poll taken by Yahoo News and shows that now less than half of those questioned said they would take part in widespread vaccination efforts. Opposition to vaccination has been growing as the pandemic has continued unabated.
In early May, 55 percent of Americans said yes, they would get vaccinated. But that number shrank in each subsequent survey, slipping to 50 percent in late May and 46 percent in early July. Now just 42 percent of Americans plan to get vaccinated for COVID-19 — the smallest share to date.
The outlook for universal vaccination is clouded by political considerations: skepticism about medical authority and expertise (more common among Trump supporters), and suspicions (mostly among Democrats) that the administration is cutting corners on safety to rush a vaccine into production before the election. Together, these forces threaten to undermine COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S.
For a COVID-19 vaccine to actually stop the pandemic, scientists estimate that at least 60 percent of the population — and probably more like 75 or 80 percent — would need to be vaccinated, a number that depends on many factors, including the efficacy of the vaccine itself and how widely the virus has already spread.
Vaccines against different diseases vary in their effectiveness. The efficacy of the measles vaccine is 95 percent to 98 percent, which means that If 100 people who haven’t been exposed to the measles were given that vaccine, 95 to 98 of them wouldn’t get infected (on average). The efficacy of the flu vaccine generally ranges from 40 percent to 60 percent. The more effective a vaccine is, the fewer vaccinated people it takes to stop a pandemic.
Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it would be willing to approve a COVID-19 candidate vaccine with an efficacy of 50 percent. Such a Vaccine would help slow the virus’s spread, but it probably wouldn’t extinguish the U.S. epidemic — even if all Americans got vaccinated.
Cleansing wipes in short supply
Can’t find Clorox disinfecting wipes on the store shelf? You are not alone. Clorox CEO Benno Dorer says that grocery stores won't be fully stocked any time soon, because demand increased six-fold during the pandemic, according to CBS Los Angeles. The supply may return to normal sometime next year, he added.
July 25, 2020
Group says U.S. should reimpose tough virus restrictions
Faced with rising numbers of Coronavirus cases, 150 health professionals are urging government leaders to reimpose stricter regulations to stop virus spread.
"Tell the American people the truth about the virus, even when it’s hard. Take bold action to save lives — even when it means shutting down again," the letter, spearheaded by the nonprofit U.S. Public Interest Research Group, says.
Public health leaders argue in the letter that the U.S. reopened too quickly, nonessential businesses should close again, Americans should mostly stay home, and government officials need to invest more in testing, contact tracing, and personal protective equipment capacities.
"If you don’t take these actions, the consequences will be measured in widespread suffering and death," according to the letter addressed to President Donald Trump, federal officials and governors.
Since lifting strict regulations on non-essential businesses many states including California, Texas and Florida have seen surges in COVID-19 cases with many counties exceeding previous records for reported infections per day.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported 3.82 million total cases (57,777 new) nationwide and 140,630 deaths (473 new). In total, more than half of US states and New York City reported more than 40,000 total cases, including California with more than 375,000 cases; Florida with more than 350,000; Texas with more than 325,000; New York City with more than 200,000; and 8 additional states with more than 100,000. The US is #4 globally in terms of per capita daily incidence.
Virus sends more Americans to the unemployment line
The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose last week for the first time since March, as 1.4 million additional jobless workers joined the ranks of those needing government assistance.
The uptick ended a 15-week stretch in which initial weekly claims steadily declined. In little more than four months, a staggering 52.7 million sought unemployment aid for the first time.
The economy was starting to unthaw as businesses welcomed back customers after closing in the spring to dampen the spread of COVID-19. But a surge in cases led several states, including California and Texas, to order many businesses to shut once again, slowing rehiring and fueling more layoffs.
"The labor market remains in a precarious place as COVID-19 cases surge in some parts of the country and stricter measures are adopted in response,"
The latest wave of applicants may see payments significantly lower than what unemployed Americans received in recent months, as an additional $600 a week provided by the federal government ends this weekend.
“There is one clear takeaway from this morning’s unemployment insurance report. Not extending the weekly $600 benefit supplement would be unconscionable,” Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, said in a statement. "Families will be evicted from their homes, poverty will soar, children will go hungry, businesses will shutter and the economy will tank."
The economic downturn has been especially hard on the restaurant industry where restaurants were limited to take out food only to avoid indoor dining.
Sixty percent of restaurants that closed because of the pandemic will not reopen, according to a quarterly bulletin released this week by Yelp, the review service.
Chinese drug could offer some immunity.
A drug being tested by scientists at China's prestigious Peking University could not only shorten the recovery time for those infected, but even offer short-term immunity from the virus, researchers say.
Sunney Xie, director of the university's Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics, told AFP that the drug has been successful at the animal testing stage.
"When we injected neutralizing antibodies into infected mice, after five days the viral load was reduced by a factor of 2, 500," said Xie.
"That means this potential drug has (a) therapeutic effect."
The drug uses neutralizing antibodies -- produced by the human immune system to prevent the virus infecting cells -- which Xie's team isolated from the blood of 60 recovered patients.
A study on the team's research, published Sunday in the scientific journal Cell, suggests that using the antibodies provides a potential "cure" for the disease and shortens recovery time.
July 18, 2020
Virus springs inmates from prison
More than 8,000 California state prison inmates will be released early to stop a major outbreak of Coronavirus among the incarcerated.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said the release will take place on a rolling basis and will involve convicts that were scheduled to be freed soon and others who are at high risk of complications if they contract the virus.
COVID-19 inmate cases totaled 2,286 and 31 deaths throughout the state’s penal system as of July 17. Seven hundred nineteen prison staff have been infected but none have died.
Initial releases will involve inmates with less than 180 days left on their sentence or 4,800 people. Others with less than a year to serve or who live in one of eight highly infected prisons will have their cases reviewed.
Prisoners serving time for domestic violence or other violent crimes will not be eligible along with convicts who need to register as sex offenders and those considered high risk for committing violent crimes once set free.
While health experts and prisoner advocates applauded the move, many said it still was not enough to curb a fast-moving outbreak inside California’s chronically overcrowded prisons. The institutions currently hold 123% of their design capacity.
As of Wednesday, about 104,725 individuals remained imprisoned in California’s 35 institutions. Nearly 20,000 people would need to be released just to reach 100% capacity.
Those who are aged 30 or older and meet the criteria will be immediately eligible for release, prison officials said. Those 29 and under will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, taking into account factors like medical risk and time served.
Additional releases will include people who are at high risk of dying if they get the coronavirus, including people who are over 65 or have chronic health conditions or respiratory illnesses
Newsom’s decision was influenced by a major virus outbreak at San Quentin prison near San Francisco. Thirteen hundred inmates have been infected along with 205 staff members. Seven inmates died of what officials suspected to be COVID-19 complications, including men on Death Row.
Heartburn drugs tied to higher coronavirus risk
Common heartburn drugs may be tied to a greater risk of the Coronavirus, researchers have found. The class of drugs known as proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) that include omeprazole (Prilosec), lansoprazole (Prevacid), pantoprazole (Protonix), and esomeprazole (Nexium) work by stopping the stomach from producing too much acid.
Researchers conducted a survey of more than 53,000 people, including nearly 4,000 who said they had tested positive for COVID-19. They found that those taking a PPI once a day had more than a two-fold higher risk of coronavirus infection, and people taking them twice a day had more than a three-fold higher risk than those not using the medicines, according to the study led by Dr. Brennan Spiegel of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
But the study only shows a correlation and does not prove that PPIs caused the increase in coronavirus infections. "Further studies examining the association between PPIs and COVID-19 are needed," Spiegel's team said.
Ivy League cancels fall sports
There will be no football at the nation’s toniest colleges this fall due to the Coronavirus. Officials representing the Ivy League said they are cancelling fall sports to avoid an outbreak of the disease caused by large crowds at stadiums and other venues. The decision affects eight institutions: Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth and Cornell Universities, plus the University of Pennsylvania.
Some fall sports may be postponed until the spring semester, officials said. Other Division I schools were waiting to see what the Ivy League would do before deciding how to alter their sports programs. Many Division II and Division III schools have already terminated fall sports for 2020.
July 5, 2020
Virus may not have started in China
The Coronavirus may not have begun in China, one scientist believes.
Dr. Tom Jefferson, senior associate tutor at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM), at Oxford University and visiting professor at Newcastle University, argues that there is growing evidence that the virus was elsewhere before it emerged in Asia.
Last week, Spanish virologists announced they had found traces of the disease in samples of waste water collected in March 2019, nine months before the coronavirus disease was seen in China. The virus was thought to have emerged in the city of Wuhan where some of the first victims had frequented a so called “wet market” where exotic live animals were slaughtered and sold.
Italian scientists have also found evidence of coronavirus in sewage samples in Milan and Turin, in mid-December, many weeks before the first case was detected, while experts have found traces in Brazil in November.
Jefferson believes that many viruses lie dormant throughout the globe and emerge when conditions are favorable. It also means they can vanish as quickly as they arrive.
"Where did Sars 1 go? It’s just disappeared," he said "So we have to think about these things. We need to start researching the ecology of the virus, understanding how it originates and mutates.
"I think the virus was already here, here meaning everywhere. We may be seeing a dormant virus that has been activated by environmental conditions.”
"Strange things like this happened with Spanish Flu. In 1918 around 30 per cent of the population of Western Samoa died of Spanish Flu, and they hadn’t had any communication with the outside world.
"The explanation for this could only be that these agents don’t come or go anywhere. They are always here and something ignites them, maybe human density or environmental conditions, and this is what we should be looking for."
Jefferson believes that the virus may be transmitted through the sewage system or shared toilet facilities, not just through droplets expelled by talking, coughing and sneezing.
Writing in Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper Jefferson and Professor Carl Henegehan, Director of the CEBM, call for an in-depth investigation similar to that carried out by John Snow in 1854, which showed cholera was spreading in London from an infected well in Soho.
Exploring why so many outbreaks happen at food factories and meatpacking plants could uncover major new transmission routes, they believe. It may be shared toilet facilities coupled with cool conditions that allow the virus to thrive..
"These outbreaks need to be investigated properly with people on the ground one by one. You need to do what John Snow did. You question people, and you start constructing hypotheses that fit the facts, not the other way around."
July 3, 2020
Virus makes overwhelming comeback
The Coronavirus is making a frightening comeback in the United States. The number of confirmed cases per day climbed to an all-time high of more than 50,000 on Thursday, with the infection curve rising in 40 of 50 states.
“What we've seen is a very disturbing week,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious-disease expert, said in a livestream with the American Medical Association.
The surge comes as western states such as Texas and California had begun reopening businesses, entertainment centers and other public facilities following lower numbers of infections and virus-related hospitalizations.
The surge has been blamed in part on Americans not covering their faces or following other social distancing rules. Fauci warned that if people don't start complying, “we're going to be in some serious difficulty.”
The U.S. recorded 50,700 new confirmed cases, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. That represents a doubling of the daily total over the past month and is higher even than what the country witnessed during the most lethal phase of the crisis in April and May, when the New York metropolitan area was easily the worst hot spot in the U.S.
All but 10 states are showing an upswing in newly reported cases over the past 14 days, according to data compiled by the volunteer COVID Tracking Project. The outbreaks are most severe in Arizona, Texas and Florida, which together with California have reclosed or otherwise clamped back down on bars, restaurants and movie theaters over the past week or so.
The surge comes as Americans head into a Fourth of July holiday that health officials warn could add fuel to the outbreak by drawing big crowds. Many municipalities have canceled fireworks displays.
In Texas, where new cases in the past two weeks have swelled from about 2,400 a day to almost 8,100 on Wednesday, the positive case rate ballooned from 8% to 14.5%. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the wearing of masks across most of the state after refusing until recently to let even local governments impose such rules.
Abbott said in a video posted on Twitter that the state’s lower infection rate and case counts after his stay-home order in April might have led some to think the “coast was clear.”
In California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the closure of restaurants, bars, wineries movies theaters and museums in 19 of the state’s counties where virus cases have seen an upsurge. Most are in the state’s Central Valley and other agricultural areas. By Wednesday, state health officials had recorded 237,068 cases of COVID-19 and 6,152 deaths.
Newsom is recommending that the affected counties cancel planned fireworks displays and other public events that draw large crowds. Californians should also avoid holding large traditional backyard barbecues for friends and family where social distancing may be hard to enforce.
During the holiday state agents will target businesses that are “thumbing their nose” at state imposed restrictions and putting the public at risk.
The U.S. has reported at least 2.7 million cases and more than 128,000 dead, the highest toll in the world. Globally there have been 10.7 million confirmed cases and over 517,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins’ count. The true toll is believed to be significantly higher, in part because of limited testing and mild cases that have been missed.
Other countries are also reporting an upswing in cases.
“We have now entered a new and treacherous phase in the life cycle of this pandemic,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa warned in a broadcast to the nation, which recorded more than 8,100 new infections, a one-day record, and has the biggest caseload on the continent.
India, the world’s second-most populous country with more than 1.3 billion people, has reported nearly 100,000 new cases in the past four days alone.
June 25, 2020
U.S. may have up to 20 million infected
The actual number of Americans infected with the Coronavirus may be as high as 20 million, according to a top government health official.
"Our best estimate right now is that for every case that's reported, there actually are 10 other infections," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield said, according to NBC news.
The estimate comes from looking at blood samples across the country for the presence of antibodies to the virus. For every confirmed case of COVID-19, 10 more people had antibodies, Redfield said.
Currently, there are 2.3 million COVID-19 cases reported in the U.S. The CDC's new estimate pushes the actual number of coronavirus cases up to at least 23 million.
"This virus causes so much asymptomatic infection," Redfield said. "The traditional approach of looking for symptomatic illness and diagnosing it obviously underestimates the total amount of infections."
The estimation comes amid rises in cases across the Southeast and Western U.S.
Infections set a record single-day count of 45,557 Wednesday. That put pressure on hard-hit states like Texas to take action.
State officials there announced that the next phase of reopening would be temporarily halted after the Lone Star State saw a 4.6% rise in cases totaling more than 5,500, along with more than 4,300 hospitalized patients.
Gov. Greg Abbott also halted all essential surgeries in four of the hardest-hit counties — which include the cities of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin — in a sign that the state’s hospital capacity is becoming increasingly strained. The move mimics steps taken in New York and New Jersey during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The surge in hospitalizations is worrying local health officials, including those in the Texas Medical Center who warned ICU-bed capacity would be breached on Thursday.
California and Florida are also seeing large daily spikes in the number of infections. California outdid its previous single-day high with 7,149 cases reported on Tuesday, according to state Department of Public Health. The previous record, set the day before, was just more than 5,000. Hospitalization and ICU rates due to the virus are also at an all-time high in the state.
The surge comes just as officials in some of the state’s largest cities are beginning to lift restrictions put in place to stop the disease. San Francisco will begin reopening beauty salons, restaurants and museums on June 29 on orders of Mayor London Breed.
Disney is delaying the phased reopening of Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, company representatives said on Wednesday. The parks are in the southern California city of Anaheim and the greater Los Angeles area has been a hotbed of virus cases recently.
In Florida, the state reported 5,511 new cases on Tuesday, the highest number in a single day. Gov. Ron DeSantis has attributed the rise to "testing more" but health officials said community transmission is still playing a role as the state reopens.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the virus is spreading at private gatherings in homes, and more young people are testing positive. Another source of rising virus numbers can be due to outbreaks at some state prisons, he said.
Counties that don't enforce health orders that aim to halt the spread could see state funding withheld, the governor added.
“California has a responsibility and obligation legally and otherwise to enforce those laws," Newsom said, “That will be an exception and we hope we never have to trigger that."
Whether the increased case load is linked to recent demonstrations over police brutality and racism is unclear. Health officials were concerned that large street gatherings would spread the virus as demonstrators marched close together ignoring social distancing.
"I do want to say that it's highly likely, given the increased numbers that we're seeing that some of this is in fact people who may have been in a crowded situation at one of the protests where there was spread," Los Angeles County Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said.
But in Alameda County, which saw extensive demonstrations and related violence recently, officials are not convinced.
There was still no "clear correlation between protest activities and increases in testing or positive cases" according to county health spokesperson Neetu Balram.
To view a comprehensive interactive display showing the chronology of the COVID-19 spread, visit the New York Times.
Trump cuts off Coronavirus research funds
In a purely political move, the Trump administration has cut off funding to the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) coronavirus research.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told Congress Tuesday about the cancellation. When asked why the money was eliminated, Fauci said he had no idea.
“Why was it cancelled? It was cancelled because the NIH was told to cancel it,” Fauci said. “I don’t know the reason, but we were told to cancel it.”
The Trump administration abruptly slashed funding in April for a research grant to the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, with more than $350,000 still in the group’s 2020 grant.
After the hearing, Fauci told Politico it was the White House that told the NIH to cancel this grant.
When contacted, the White House said it encouraged the defunding of the program, but ultimately it was up to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to make the final decision.
“The grantee was not in compliance with NIH’s grant policy,” an HHS spokesperson told Politico but declined to comment further on the decision.
The cancellation of the grant came after reports surfaced about EcoHealth Alliances’ research with a virologist at Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, who works with bat coronaviruses.
This lab became the center of a conspiracy theory with the U.S. government speculating that Covid-19 did not originate at a Wuhan wet market but instead accidently escaped from the institute.
During a coronavirus press briefing on 17 April, a reporter asked why the federal government would provide a grant to China amid this pandemic with rumors circulating about where the virus originated.
”We will end that grant very quickly,” President Donald Trump responded.
June 19, 2020
Virus on the rise world wide
The Coronavirus is not going away anytime soon. The World Health Organization issued a dire warning on Friday that the pandemic is accelerating. Thursday was a record day for new cases — more than 150,000 globally.
“The world is in a new and dangerous phase,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O.
“Many people are understandably fed up with being at home. Countries are understandably eager to open up their societies and their economies. But the virus is still spreading fast. It is still deadly, and most people are still susceptible,” he said.
Eighty-one nations worldwide have seen increasing numbers of cases for the past two weeks while only 36 are experiencing a decline, according to the New York Times.
The situation is especially dire in Brazil which recorded 54,771 cases in 24 hours. More than 48,954 Brazilians have died and the nation has made South America an epicenter for the virus. Health officials attributed the larger numbers to late reports from three states.
The administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been criticized for his response to the health emergency. Bolsanaro has dismissed the danger posed by the virus, undermined quarantine measures and told the nation to keep working to avoid an economic collapse.
In the United States, Florida and South Carolina are experiencing a surge of cases and deaths. Florida, reported 3,822 new cases on Friday beating a single-day record it set the previous day, and bringing its total number of cases close to 90,000. A total of 3,104 people have died.
South Carolina also reported on Friday a record of 1,081 new daily cases. It was the seventh time in 11 days that the state broke its single-day case record, and the state epidemiologist on Thursday pleaded with residents to wear masks and practice social distancing.
Other hard hit states include Arizona, Oklahoma and California which all reported their highest daily case numbers on Thursday. And Texas became the sixth state in the nation to surpass 100,000 cases, according to a New York Times database. Cases in the Lone Star State have doubled over the past month.
California Governor Gavin Newsom Thursday ordered that all Californians wear masks when shopping, taking public transit and seeking medical care. Previously use of masks had only been recommended. Those who violate the law could be charged with a misdemeanor but it’s unclear how the state will enforce the order.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis attributed the rise in cases to an increase of infections among people under 40, many of whom, he stressed, were asymptomatic and less likely to put a strain on hospitals.
He said an increase in testing across the state had also contributed to the rise, even as he cautioned that there had been an “erosion of social distancing among the younger population.” “As you test more, you find more,” he said.
The Trump administration has made a misleading claim that the recent jumps are a result of more aggressive testing.
Crowds were smaller than anticipated at a rally held by President Trump in Tulsa, Oklahoma Saturday but it was unclear if fears of contracting the virus from a large crowd was then reason. A lawsuit to stop the rally filed by local citizens was rejected by the Oklahoma Supreme Court on Friday.
Few in the crowd at the Bank of Oklahoma arena were wearing protective masks and were seated close to each other without social distancing.
Ship’s captain will not return
The captain of a Navy aircraft carrier who appealed for help in dealing with the Coronavirus outbreak aboard his ship will not be restored to his command, naval officials announced Friday.
Capt. Brett E. Crozier of the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt and his superior, Rear Adm. Stuart P. Baker, made poor decisions in handling the emergency, according to Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite and Adm. Michael M. Gilday, the chief of naval operations.
Crozier claimed that he was not getting cooperation from the Navy when some of the carrier’s crewmen tested positive and made his objections clear in a memo circulated to other officers.
The letter was leaked to the press and an embarrassed Trump administration fired Crozier. The ship’s captain was considered as hero by his crew for putting their lives above his career.
The controversy was further exacerbated by then-acting Navy Secretary Thomas B. Modley, who flew to the carrier and denounced Crozier in a profanity-laced tirade. Modley resigned the next day..
Baseball clubs close training facilities
Two teams, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Toronto Blue Jays have shut down their Florida training facilities after players tested positive for COVID-19. Five players and three staff members of the Phillies were affected while one of the Blue Jays caught the virus. The Tampa Bay Lightning of the National Hockey League also closed its training after three players and several staff members tested positive for the virus.
Florida was considered as a site for Major League BaseballJune 10, 2020
Virus grows in rural America
As rates of Coronavirus infection drop in urban areas, the virus is working its way into small-town America.
Since the start of June, 14 states and Puerto Rico have recorded their highest-ever seven-day average of new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, according to data tracked by The Washington Post: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Carolina, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.
The pandemic’s first wave burned through dense metro hubs such as New York City, Chicago and Detroit. But the highest percentages of new cases are coming from much smaller communities.
Coronavirus cases in counties with fewer than 60,000 people is part of the trend of new infections appearing in the nation’s rural communities. Many rural clinics have been hit by a loss of revenue during the pandemic and may not be able to handle the outbreaks, experts warn.
As of Monday, at least 112,000 people in the United States have died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, with almost 2 million cases of the virus reported.
Recent nationwide protests against racism and police violence could spark another rise in Coronavirus exposure as thousands of demonstrators took to the streets without wearing masks or observing social distancing.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is concerned that the protests could lead to a spike in cases. “It’s a perfect set up for further spread of the virus in the sense of creating these blips which might turn into some surges,” Fauci admitted on a Washington D.C. radio station this week..
Members of the Washington, D.C., National Guard have already tested positive for coronavirus since being deployed on May 31 to help deal with mass demonstrations and rioting in the nation’s capital.
June 7, 2002
COVID-19 is not becoming more dangerous, expert says
Analysis of Coronavirus strains has revealed that the virus has not mutated to become more severe or easily transmitted, a leading health authority said this week.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical Lead for the World Health Organization WHO COVID-19 response, indicated that the genomic analysis has not identified any genetic changes to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that would suggest an increase in transmissibility or disease severity. She emphasized that increased cases of COVID-19 could result if the public becomes complacent or tired of social distancing restrictions.
Six hundred hospital workers have died from Coronavirus
More than 600 health workers nationwide have died from COVID-19 according to a survey taken by two media organizations
Lost on the Frontline is a project launched by Britain’s Guardian newspaper and Kaiser Health News that aims to count, verify and memorialize every healthcare worker who dies during the pandemic.
The tally includes doctors, nurses and paramedics, as well as crucial healthcare staff such as hospital janitors, administrators and nursing home workers.
The project has now published the names and obituaries for more than 100 workers. A majority of the victims were people of color, mostly African American and Asian/Pacific Islander.
There is no other comprehensive accounting of US healthcare workers’ deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has counted 368 Covid deaths among healthcare workers, but acknowledges its tally is an undercount.
Many of the deaths occurred because hospital employees were forced to reuse masks countless times amid widespread equipment shortages. Others had only trash bags for protection. Some deaths have been met with employers’ silence or denials that they were infected at work.
Some turning to harmful products to fight off the virus
Americans are putting bleach on their food and other risky practices to ward off the Coronavirus, officials of the nation’s premier health agency said this week.
In a survey published by the Centers for Disease Control Friday, 39% of 502 respondents reported engaging in “non-recommend, high-risk practices,” including using bleach on food, applying household cleaning or disinfectant products to their skin and inhaling or ingesting such products.
The agency also found many people had limited knowledge of how to safely prepare and use cleaning products and disinfectants. Only 23% responded that room temperature water should be used to dilute bleach and 35% said that bleach should not be mixed with vinegar.
More surprisingly, only 58% of respondents knew bleach shouldn’t be mixed with ammonia, which creates chloramine, a harmful gas.
The CDC said the survey was conducted after poison centers reported a sharp increase in calls. “They’re getting overaggressive in cleaning,” said Michele Caliva, administrative director of the Upstate New York Poison Center.
Callers have mixed cleaning products, sprayed disinfectant on bread wrappers and wondered if they can eat the bread, bathed their kids in bleach solutions and just generally failed to follow label directions, she said.
One caller even asked how she was supposed to drink a cleaning product after President Donald Trump made a comment about drinking disinfectant, which triggered several states to issue a warning against dangerous disinfectant use.
May 27,2020
Virus deaths hit record high
America’s Coronavirus death toll exceeded 100,000 Wednesday, proof that the pandemic continues to haunt this nation even as most states are lifting many restrictions designed to keep people safe.
By Wednesday afternoon, confirmed cases of COVID-19 totaled 1,698,581 and 100,276 American had died of virus-related illness. Some experts say that statistic may be underestimating the real number of victims who died at home or who could not be identified due to lack of testing for the illness.
Evidence of a mysterious pneumonia surfaced in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year which would later be identified as the Coronavirus and its associated illness COVID-19.
The first U.S. death was reported in Seattle on Feb 29 but evidence has since been unearthed proving that at least two U.S. victims died before that and may have infected as early as January.
On March 11, The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic and two days later President Donald Trump declared a national emergency.
Schools, retail stores, office buildings, sporting events and other institutions considered non-essential were shut down to prevent people from congregating and spreading the infection. Grocery and hardware stores were allowed to remain open as were banks though customers were required to wear masks and stand six feet apart to prevent contagion.
Unemployment skyrocketed reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Faced with near total economic collapse, Congress approved a bill giving most Americans $1,200 each to pay for rent and other expenses they could not afford while being off the job.
From the beginning, the nation’s response was haphazard, confused and lacking any effective coordination from the White House.
Medical personnel lacked clothing to protect them while treating infected patients and hospitals did not have enough ventilators for the gravely ill. Individual states had to bid on the open market for needed supplies even against the federal government itself when the national emergency stockpile began to dry up.
The nationwide response quickly took on a partisan tone with Republicans insisting that lockdown measures be lifted soon to get the economy moving again. States ruled by Republican governors like Florida and Georgia were among the last to institute total lockdowns and conservative groups –encouraged by right wing media and Trump-have been staging demonstrations demanding that the lockdowns end.
Trump’s White House Coronavirus advisory group issued a series of guidelines encouraging states to reopen only after the number of virus cases had declined for two weeks and the state had adequate testing to identify new outbreaks.
The next morning, Trump encouraged his supporters to essentially disregard the guidelines and “liberate” states ruled by Democratic governors. He has since declined to wear a protective mask in public and has belittled former Vice President Joe Biden and a reporter for wearing facial protection.
States have been slowly easing rules as the number of new virus cases plateaus or begins to decline. Even though the outlook has improved slightly, health experts insist Americans must continue social distancing and other safety routines to avoid a virus resurgence.
But that may be difficult. On the Memorial Day weekend, beaches throughout the nation were crowded with patrons who stood close to one another and did not wear masks.
Fauci says drug won’t work
President Donald Trump may be taking a medication to ward off Coronavirus, but the nation’s best known doctor says it won’t do any good.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House Coronavirus task force became the first official to say that hydroxychloroquine is not an effective treatment for the virus based on available data.
"The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy," Fauci — the U.S. government's top infectious disease expert — said on CNN.
But he stopped short of calling for an outright ban of the drug, which Trump said he was taking last week as a preventative measure after a top White House aide was diagnosed with the coronavirus.