Category: Corona Virus

To put the COVID-19 pandemic in the rearview mirror and prevent other coronaviruses from causing havoc, the world needs an arsenal of measures to prevent and treat these infections. To develop new medications, researchers are working to target one protein, nsp13, that these viruses need to replicate. In a study in ACS Infectious Diseases, one team describes a new approach to identifying molecules that interfere with this protein, a step toward development of pan-coronavirus antivirals.

While vaccines prepare the immune system to fight off the virus, antiviral medications treat infections that have already begun by interfering with an essential part of the viral machinery. Some antivirals, including remdesivir, molnupiravir and nirmatrelvir, are already available for COVID-19 patients; however, health authorities want additional options that disrupt infection in different ways. Researchers have identified a promising new target within SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses, a protein called nsp13. It is an enzyme that works with other viral proteins to help copy the pathogen's genetic code by unwinding its double-stranded viral RNA. Nsp13 fuels this work by breaking bonds between phosphate groups, including those in the energy-storing molecule known as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Nsp13 is also involved in capping the viral RNA, which protects it from the human immune system. To speed up the search for drugs that block nsp13, Masoud Vedadi and colleagues developed a new way to screen large numbers of molecules to identify those with the most potent activity.

Because nsp13's energy-releasing activity increases in the presence of single-stranded nucleic acids, the team devised tests that focus on this activity in the presence and absence of single-stranded DNA. In both cases, the tests glow more brightly when less ATP is broken down, which occurs when something is interfering with nsp13. They used one of these tests to screen a library of 5,000 small molecules, turning up 17 promising results. Additional work, including performing the second test, narrowed the field to only six compounds -; potential starting points for the development of future, more-potent nsp13 inhibitors, according to the researchers. The new tests, meanwhile, could be used to efficiently screen large numbers of small molecules for activity against nsp13, or to confirm results from other approaches, they say.

The authors acknowledge funding from the University of Toronto (Toronto COVID-19 Action Initiative-2020) and support of the Structural Genomics Consortium, University of Toronto site.

Source:

American Chemical Society

Journal reference:

View original post here:

New approach could pave the way for development of pan-coronavirus antivirals - News-Medical.Net

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health is now publishing key coronavirus data weekly instead of daily andit comes at a time when a new variant is spreading, and more data is needed, according to one local doctor.

The BA.5 variant is more contagious and can evade immunity. It is contributing to a new surge in cases and hospitalizations.

Dr. Sabrina Assoumou, infectious disease physician with Boston Medical Center, said that considering the new variant is circulating, it is not the time to have less frequent data reports from the state.

"At a time when we have a subvariant that we know is more transmissible and more immune-evasive, I would have personally liked to have access to more data," Assoumou told Jim Braude on Greater Boston.

It remains unclear if the variant causes more severe disease, and Dr. Paul Sax, clinical director of Brigham and Womens Hospital infectious disease division, said intensive care units are not filling up with COVID patients.

"The dominant effect on disease severity is how much prior immunity the population has, and our population now has lots of prior immunity," Sax said.

Sax and Assoumou said it's important to remain vigilant in the face of the new variant by getting a booster shot, hosting gatherings outside in the nice summer weather and testing if you have symptoms.

Watch: New coronavirus variant is the most contagious yet. What can you do to protect yourself?

Read the original post:

Move to weekly coronavirus data reporting in Mass., rather than daily, comes as BA.5 variant spreads - GBH News

Patient deaths: 1,021,306

Total vaccine doses distributed: 774,307,105

Patients whove received the first dose: 260,327,743

Patients whove received the second dose: 222,455,652

% of population fully vaccinated (both doses, not including boosters): 67%

% tied to Omicron variant: 100%

% tied to Other: 0%

Read more from the original source:

Coronavirus Omicron variant, vaccine, and case numbers in the United States: July 13, 2022 - Medical Economics

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Rush hour riders of the Staten Island Ferry can expect to see reduced service during their upcoming commute.

On Wednesday, the Department of Transportation (DOT) announced that the Staten Island Ferry will provide reduced service every 20 minutes during the morning (6 to 9 a.m.) and afternoon (4 to 8 p.m.) rush hours for the next two weeks.

From St. George, the Staten Island Ferry would typically provide service every 15 minutes from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.

From Whitehall, the Staten Island Ferry would typically provide service every 15 minutes from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

The Staten Island Ferry will continue to run every 30 minutes throughout the rest of the day, though the department advised that some overnight cancellations may occur.

A DOT representative said that the service changes are a result of an uptick in coronavirus (COVID-19) cases among Staten Island Ferry crew, but was unable to provide a specific number of workers who are currently out sick.

New York Citys seven-day average coronavirus positivity rate has been steadily increasing over the past month, nearly doubling from 7.98% on June 13 to 15.1% on July 13, according to city data.

During that time, the seven-day average number of daily coronavirus cases increased from 2,931 per day on June 13 to 4,049 per day on July 13.

In the advisory, the department reminded Staten Island Ferry passengers that face masks are required at all times when within the terminals and onboard the boats, despite the federal mask mandate for public transportation being voided in April.

In recent months, the DOT has been forced to run modified service numerous times, particularly during afternoon and overnight hours, due to personnel issues limiting the departments ability to adequately staff the boats.

Read the original here:

As coronavirus cases rise among Staten Island Ferry workers, service to be reduced for 2 weeks - SILive.com

Independent Newsmedia

The Arizona Department of Health Services on July 13 reported the number of coronavirus cases in Queen Creek and San Tan Valley at 54,667 in ZIP codes 85140, 85142 and 85143.

That is an increase of 327 new cases from one week ago.

Last week, cases stood at 54,340, an increase of 369 from the week before.

85140 ZIP code:

85142 ZIP code:

85143 ZIP code:

The current number of vaccinated people in these ZIP codes stands at 88,588 or 56.1% of the population.

For most people, the new coronavirus can lead to COVID-19 that can have mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. But for some especially older adults and people with existing health problems it can cause a more severe illness and even death.

To see full numbers across the state, clickhere.

Read the rest here:

New cases of coronavirus seen in Queen Creek area - Daily Independent

Dive Brief:

Congress approved three batches of emergency pandemic relief funding for higher ed since early 2020: the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act of 2020, the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021, and the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The Ed Department distributed the money for colleges through grants under the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, or HEERF.

The three bills allocated a total of more than $76 billion for HEERF. More than half of that money, about $40 billion, came from the American Rescue Plan, the first major package signed into law after President Joe Biden took office.

Most colleges must send about half of HEERF grants to students in need so they can pay for necessities like tuition, housing or food.

The American Rescue Plan allowed colleges to use HEERF's institutional funding to pay for debt forgiveness, essentially using the federal money to pay for debts students owed to institutions that bursars' offices were unlikely to ever collect in full.

The program hasn't been without controversy. Shortly after HEERF was created, several wealthy universities turned down HEERF dollars after former President Donald Trump criticized the program for allocating money to Harvard University, which has the country's largest endowment.

The relief funding is running dry, which will likely heap financial pressure on stressed colleges. Pandemic-related aid from the government averaged $13.2 million per college, S&P Global Ratings estimated in June. It accounted for more than 4% of adjusted operating revenue at nearly a third of colleges in the 2021 fiscal year.

When announcing the final $198 million in grants Wednesday, the Ed Department said money went to public and private nonprofit colleges with unmet needs, like community colleges, rural institutions, and colleges that have lost enrollment during the pandemic.

"This funding from the American Rescue Plan will help HBCUs, MSIs, community colleges, and other inclusive institutions better support their students, from investing in campus mental health, to providing financial relief, to meeting housing, transportation, and child care needs," U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement. "When we invest in stronger supports for our students, we help remove barriers to their success so that they can stay on track with their studies, complete their degrees, and ultimately, build rewarding careers."

Government officials highlighted several colleges that have used HEERF money to reduce tuition, waive tuition, zero out student debt balances, pay for food pantries, finance student textbooks and fight the spread of the coronavirus.

The Ed Department promised to post a list of institutions newly receiving grants, but it was not immediately available Wednesday. It did post data breaking down HEERF funding by state. Higher Ed Dive has posted that data in a searchable list here.

Link:

244 colleges to split final $198M in coronavirus relief funding - Higher Ed Dive

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a number of technological innovations beyond vaccines and treatments and some of them came from the Capital Region.

New ultraviolet lamps to kill coronavirus, low-cost ventilators, locally made disinfectants and phone apps to help people avoid crowds were some of the innovations coming from Capital Region businesses and universities.

And some are still in use.

Its still active. Its still going on, Kristin Bennett said of the Study Safe app that her students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute developed two years ago.

Bennett is a math and computer science professor at the Troy university, and she worked with her students to develop the app, which identifies the least crowded spots on campus.

Those are presumably the safest locations for studying during a pandemic.While it hasnt been commercialized, Bennett said students still use it. And more importantly, it provided a hands-on lesson about building smartphone applications.We learned a lot about dealing with real-time data, she said.

That experience was doubly helpful since it was done remotely. While challenging, the exercise filled in what might have otherwise been a gap when in-person work was suspended due to the pandemic.

RPI students have since built apps and databases in other areas.

One group is building a system for tracking the amount of energy produced at a new solar farm in the nearby city of Cohoes.

Other areas include data systems to match genetic makeup with the best foods for individuals. Another is for tracking the way loans, including mortgages, are collateralized with cryptocurrency.

While the worst of the pandemic seems like a distant memory, Albany distiller Matthew Jager still has supplies of the hand sanitizer he made starting two years ago.

Its not something that Ive had to make in a while, said Jager, who operates the Capital Region's Yankee Distillers, a top-shelf line of whiskey.

I have a lot of regular retail customers who come in to buy it, Jager said of his Yankee Distillers Hand Sanitizer.

Those customers include private customers and businesses such as restaurants.

Some of the restaurateurs, he added, have also received the state-issued disinfectant that was made in prisons two years ago. But they have complained about the medicinal smell, compared to the scented Yankee Distillers line which is created by denaturing the alcohol.

They are still working through the prison stuff, Jager said of restaurants that had stocked up on state disinfectant.

These days, Jager said he donates the sanitizer to hospitals and medical facilities and sells it to others.At the current rate of sales and donations, he figures he has enough to run through the end of the year.

And while he could turn the sanitizer spout back on if he had to, he hopes that he doesnt need to do that.

Its something that Im very proud of to have been able to help people, he said. And its something that I wish to never have to make again for the rest of my life.

rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU

Continue reading here:

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a number of technological innovations beyond vaccines and treatments and some of these new inventions came from the...

The spread of drug-resistant infections surged during the coronavirus pandemic, killing nearly 30,000 people in 2020 and upending much of the recent progress made in containing the spread of so-called superbugs, according to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Deaths caused by infections impervious to antibiotics and antifungal medications rose 15 percent during the first year of the pandemic compared to 2019, federal health officials found. Much of the increase was tied to the chaos wrought by the coronavirus as doctors and nurses struggled to treat waves of grievously sick patients whose illness they did not fully understand, before vaccines and treatments were widely available.

About 40 percent of the deaths were among hospitalized patients, with the remainder occurring in nursing homes and other health care settings, the C.D.C. report found. Early on, many frontline hospital workers mistakenly administered antibiotics for viral lung infections that did not respond to such drugs, according to the study. Many of the sickest patients spent weeks or months in intensive care units, increasing the chances for drug-resistant bugs to enter their bodies through intravenous lines, catheters and ventilator tubes.

The death toll is likely much higher, federal health officials said, because the public health labs that normally track drug-resistant infections have been swamped during the pandemic, leading to significant gaps in data for many of the most dangerous pathogens.

The C.D.C. said the outbreaks of drug-resistant infections were likely abetted by a nationwide shortage of face masks, gloves and gowns the vital armor that protects health workers and helps limit the spread of pathogens as they travel from room to room. Because of staff shortages and overwhelmed wards at many hospitals, infection control specialists were often reassigned to provide basic patient care rather than carry out their usual duties of promoting the appropriate use of antibiotics, hand washing and other safety measures, the report said.

These setbacks can and must be temporary, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the C.D.C., said in a statement accompanying the report. The Covid-19 pandemic has made it clear prevention is preparedness. We must prepare our public health systems to fight multiple threats simultaneously.

Federal officials were especially concerned about the increased spread of some of the most dangerous pathogens. They found a 78 percent spike in infections of Acinetobacter, a bacteria that is resistant to the antibiotic carbapenem and that often spreads among intensive care patients, and a 60 percent rise in Candida auris, a deadly fungus that often stalks nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

The analysis highlights what public health experts have long described as a slow-moving pandemic. More than 700,000 people across the world die each year from infections that no longer respond to antimicrobial drugs, and health experts warn that the death toll could climb to 10 million by 2050 without a concerted effort to reduce the overuse of antibiotics and to develop new medications.

Antimicrobial resistance occurs when bacteria and fungi mutate to outsmart the drugs that have been designed to vanquish them. This evolutionary process is inevitable, but the more these medications are given to people and farm animals, the more likely the resistance will occur.

Nearly a third of all antibiotics are mistakenly prescribed, according to the C.D.C., oftentimes for respiratory ailments like colds that are caused by viruses. The problem appears to have grown during the pandemic: Eighty percent of hospitalized Covid patients received antibiotics between March and October 2020, the agency noted.

The C.D.C.s findings are a marked contrast to previous reports that had charted slow but steady progress in combating the hospital-acquired infections that kill 35,000 Americans a year and sicken 2.8 million. Between 2012 and 2019, drug-resistant infections dropped by 18 percent, according to the agencys 2019 report, which found that the improvements were tied to greater investment in programs to reduce the inappropriate use of antibiotics at hospitals.

The most recent report confirmed what many health care workers and public health experts had suspected based on anecdotal reports and a handful of previous studies.

The magnitude of how much worse its gotten is really alarming, said David Hyun, the director of the Antibiotic Resistance Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts, a nongovernmental organization. It also underscores the urgency that we need to really focus and reinvest in the efforts to address this public health issue.

Read more from the original source:

Drug-Resistant Infections in Hospitals Soared During the Pandemic, C.D.C. Says - The New York Times

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services reports a delay in COVID-19 vaccine data. Local 5 News will update this when that data has been updated.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services has reported 1,537,316 total positive coronavirus test results in the state and 13,175 total COVID-19 deaths.

The number of known cases per variant is no longer tracked as The Wisconsin Department of Health Services has updated its website, deleting that section.

Unable to view the tables below?Click here.

The DHS announced an attempt to verify and ensure statistics are accurate, some numbers may be subject to change. The DHS is combing through current and past data to ensure accuracy.

Wisconsins hospitals are reporting, that the 7-day moving average of COVID-19 patients hospitalized was 419 patients. Of those,47 are in an ICU. ICU patients made up 10.8%of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services reports that 9,587,800 vaccine doses and 2,067,942 booster doses have been administered in Wisconsin as of July 12. (DELAYED)

Unable to view the tables below?Click here.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services is using a new module to measure COVID-19 activity levels. They are now using the Center for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) COVID-19 Community Levels. The map is measured by the impact of COVID-19 illness on health and health care systems in the communities.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that only one county in Wisconsin is experiencing high COVID-19 community levels. Florence County in northeast Wisconsin is that one county.

15 counties in Wisconsin are experiencing medium COVID-19 community levels. Three of them are located in northeast Wisconsin: Door, Marinette, and Oneida County.

Every other county in Wisconsin is experiencing low COVID-19 community levels.

For more information on how the data is collected, visit theCDCs COVID-19 Community Levels data page.

Here is the original post:

Over 2k news cases of COVID-19 reported in Wisconsin - WeAreGreenBay.com

Macau has closed all its casinos for the first time in more than two years and other cities in China have imposed more curbs asthey try to contain Omicron-fuelled outbreaks of the coronavirus.

Macaus more than 30 casinos will shut for at least a week, with residents told to stay home for all but essential trips.

Police will monitor flows of people outside and stringent punishments will be imposed on those who disobey, said the government, which is following mainland Chinas strict zero COVID approach.

Macau has recorded about 1,500 cases since mid-June, with some 19,000 people in mandatory quarantine.

More than 30 zones have been deemed high risk and have been locked down, with no one allowed to enter or exit for at least five days.

Many casinos had already been operating with minimal staffing for the past three weeks, but this is the first time they have been completely closed since February 2020.

The restrictions in Macau come as multiple cities on the mainland began adopting new curbs to control the spread of COVID-19.

In Shanghai, residents were bracing for another mass testing campaign after a case of the BA.5 sub-variant was found.

In the central province of Henan, the town of Qinyang has almost completely locked down its nearly 700,000 residents from Sunday, with one person from each household allowed out every two days to get groceries.

In some areas, people have been told not to leave home at all.

Four major districts in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, in Gansu province, and the southern cities of Danzhou and Haikou in Hainan province, are under temporary curbs for several days, with entertainment and cultural spaces closed.

The city of Nanchang in southern Jiangxi province, with 6.3 million residents, shut some entertainment venues on Saturday, although the duration of the curbs was not specified.

In the northwestern province of Qinghai, the city of Xining kicked off a mass testing campaign on Monday after one person tested positive on Sunday.

Several major districts in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou also began mass tests on Monday

Meanwhile, nearby Hong Kong said it was considering adding real-name registration to its COVID-19 contact tracing app to ensure people who had the virus or had been ordered to undergo testing did not continue to move about the city.

Hong Kongs new health minister, Lo Chung-mau, said the change would protect the freedoms of those without the virus.

Everyone agrees that those who have COVID-19 should actually not go out and harm the rest of the population, Lo told a television programme on Sunday. If we give COVID-19 positive people freedom and let them roam the surrounding areas, those without COVID-19 will have their freedoms affected.

The health code system is used in the mainland and Macau and has three levels: red, yellow and green. Only those whose app is green are allowed to enter places like restaurants.

Strict curbs have fuelled frustration among residents in the mainland as well as both Chinese territories.

Residents in Macau have already been tested six times for the coronavirus since mid-June and are expected to do rapid antigen tests daily. As part of the new measures, they will be required to take part in mass COVID-19 tests four times this week.

More than 90 percent of the territorys 600,000 people are fully vaccinated against the virus.

Read the original:

Macau closes casinos for first time in two years over COVID - Al Jazeera English