Category: Covid-19

Michael Irvin has contracted the coronavirus.

At least, at some point he did.

During an appearance on the Rich Eisen Show, the Hall of Fame Cowboys receiver revealed his experience dealing with COVID-19 earlier this summer.

Irvin said he tested negative for coronavirus twice, but an antibody test revealed he had contracted the disease.

CLICK HERE to read more from our media partners at The Dallas Morning News.

Excerpt from:

Cowboys Legend Michael Irvin Reveals He Had COVID-19: I Went Through About Three Weeks of Hell' - NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Pediatricians described the findings as reassuring as children accounted for fewer than 1% of some coronavirus cases in England, Wales and Scotland; and only 1% of those children died, the researchers reported.

The researchers -- from various UK institutions -- analyzed data on 651 Covid-19 patients under the age of 19 who were admitted to 138 hospitals across England, Scotland and Wales between January and July. These young patients accounted for 0.9% of all patients in those hospitals at the time, the researchers noted.

Overall, 18% of the young patients needed critical care and "Black ethnicity was significantly associated with admission to critical care," the researchers noted.

The most common symptoms the young patients had were fever, cough, nausea or vomiting, and shortness of breath. The researchers found that 52 patients -- or 11% -- met the criteria for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, a troubling complication of Covid-19 in which different body parts can become inflamed.

Children who may have had MIS-C were significantly older than those who did not and were significantly more likely to be of non-White ethnicity, the researchers found. Children with MIS-C were also five times more likely than others to be admitted to critical care.

Reassured

"However, on balance it's an important study as it is likely most children with significant illness would have presented to the hospitals," said Ramanan, who was not involved in the new study.

Dr. Liz Whittaker, infectious disease lead at the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health in Britain, who was not involved in the study, called the findings "reassuring."

It was unclear which patients were admitted to the hospital directly for coronavirus infection and which had been admitted for other reasons but happened to test positive for the virus. More research also is needed to determine whether similar findings among young patients would emerge in other parts of the world.

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'Reassuring' study finds children have small risk of death and severe illness from coronavirus - CNN

At a Sunday press conference, U.S. President Donald Trump (right) announced that Food and Drug AdministrationCommissioner Stephen Hahn (left) had approved an emergency use authorization for using plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients to treat new patients with the disease.

By Kai Kupferschmidt, Jon CohenAug. 24, 2020 , 9:00 PM

Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.

At a highly unusual Sunday night press conference, U.S. President Donald Trump revealed what he described as a very historic breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19that would save countless lives: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for convalescent plasma to treat people with severe COVID-19.

The authorization could allow more hospitalized patients to receive the antibody-rich plasma, which is donated by people who have recovered from the disease. But in the wake of Trumps announcement, which came a day before the start of the Republican National Convention, researchers struggled to sort the politics from the medical and scientific import of the EUA.

Trump, flanked by FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, claimed that convalescent plasma was safe and very effective, and had proven to reduce mortality by 35%what he called a tremendous number. But that number has received a tremendous amount of scrutiny. It surprised even the researchers who conducted the study on which Trump apparently based declaration. I dont know where the 35% number comes from, says Arturo Casadevall of Johns Hopkins Universitys Bloomberg School of Public Health, the last author of the study, which has been posted as a preprint but has yet to be peer reviewed.

Randomized, controlled trials (RCTs), the gold standard for assessing therapies, havent yet shown any benefit of convalescent plasma on COVID-19 patients. One such study, which includes thousands of patients, is underway as part of the Recovery trial in the United Kingdom. An FDA review of the request for the EUAmade by a branch of FDAs parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)notes an RCT with small numbers of participants in China and another in the Netherlands. Both were stopped early and failed to show the benefits of convalescent plasma.

But the EUA rests heavily on data from the COVID-19 Plasma Consortium, funded by HHS to provide access to the treatment and assess its safety. The group has treated more than 90,000 patients at nearly 3000 sites in the United States and its territories. That study has no untreated control group, however, so it cannot ultimately address whether convalescent plasma has any risks that outweigh benefits.

The treatment was allowed under FDAs Expanded Access program, which gives patients access to experimental treatments. Casadevall says this program requires burdensome, time-consuming paperwork that the EUA will do away with. That will be particularly helpful for understaffed hospitals that treat underserved populations, he says. I think the FDA made the right call. The political noise is unfortunate.

Others say the political noise is drowning out the science.

Hahn claimed at the press conference that Trumps 35% figure translates to 35 lives saved per 100 sick people. Casadevall and others suspect both numbers are based on a small subset ofpatients, and the closest data that fit seem to be from a group that was analyzed together because of the specific test that assessed the COVID-19 antibody levels in the plasma they received. In this group of about 3000 people, 8.9% of those who received plasma containing high antibody levels died within 7 days, versus 13.7% of those who received plasma with low levels. Although that is a 35% relative difference between the groups, the absolute difference, 4.8%, amounts to 4.8 lives saved per 100 sick peoplenot 35. And after 30 days, the relative difference between the groups had dropped to 25%. At that point, the mortality rates were 22.3% and 29.6% respectively among recipients of plasma with high and low levels of antibodieshardly a historic breakthrough. (On Monday evening, after this story was posted, Hahn acknowledged he had made a mistake, tweeting that the criticism of his remark was entirely justified. What I should have said better is that the data show a relative risk reduction not an absolute risk reduction.)

Luciana Borio, a former chief scientist at FDA, calls the data presented yesterday statistical acrobatics. If the treatment effect was real and meaningful, we would probably have detected it by now, says Borio, who formerly worked on the Trump White Houses National Security Council and now is a vice president at In-Q-Tel, a not-for-profit that invests in high-tech companies.

Nicole Bouvier, a virologist and infectious disease clinician at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinaiand a participant in the Mayo Clinicled consortiumsays the data gathered so far do suggest convalescent plasma may help some COVID-19 patients. There is probably a benefit to it, but its probably not a major breakthrough as it was described, Bouvier says. She wishes the U.S. government had organized large-scale RCTs for the intervention, although they would have been costly and difficult to run. Were trying to build a wall of evidence and were putting in pebbles, she says. It would have been nice to have a great big boulder of an RCT. But it just has not evolved in that way, and I dont see it evolving that way anytime soon.

Borio and others worry the EUA may make it harder to gather that kind of evidence for other treatments. Convalescent plasma contains a mixture of different antibodies, only some of which hinder the virus that causes COVID-19, and Borio and many others have high hopes for a more targeted and standardized intervention: monoclonal preparations that contain high levels of the most potent antibodies only. But now that the EUA has put convalescent plasma within reach of more patients, it may become harder to enroll people in RCTs for monoclonal antibodies, Borio says.

Myron Cohen of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who oversees large-scale RCTs of monoclonals now taking place under the aegis of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, agrees. If potential study participants for a COVID-19 treatment intervention in a randomized controlled trial believe there is a beneficial and safe agent they can receive without randomization to a placebo, they may logically and often chose that path, Cohen says.

Given that the tens of thousands of Americans have already received convalescent plasma through FDAs Expanded Access program, its unclear how many more people the EUA will actually benefit. Bouvier says her hospital may not even be able to use the EUA, because it requires that convalescent plasma be first characterized with a specific antibody test that it does not have. How do you even do what the FDA is mandating in the EUA right now? Bouvier asks.

Over the past week, several U.S. government health officials had urgedFDA not to issue an EUA on plasma for COVID-19, which led Trump to post a tweet accusing them of being part of the deep statea supposed inside movement against himand trying to delay approvals until after the 3 November presidential election. He repeated those accusations last night. I think that there are people in the FDA and actually in your larger department that can see things being held up and wouldnt mind so much, Trump said, addressing Hahn. Thats my opiniona very strong opinion. And thats for political reasons.

Eric Topol, a cardiologist who directs the Scripps Research Translational Institute, says the EUA again represents the FDA caving directly to Trump pressure, as he believes it did when it issued an EUA (later rescinded) for hydroxychloroquine treatment for COVID-19. It sadly and unacceptably exemplifies loss of independent FDA assessment of evidence and data overridden by political pressure, Topol says. Many scientists worry the same could happen in future decisions about EUAs for COVID-19 vaccineswith far greater potential consequences because vaccines presumably will be given to hundreds of millions of healthy people.

Go here to see the original:

In FDA's green light for treating COVID-19 with plasma, critics see thin evidenceand politics - Science Magazine

TheWest Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of 10:00 a.m., on August 26,2020, there have been 409,429 total confirmatorylaboratory results received for COVID-19, with 9,540 totalcases and 190 deaths.

DHHR has confirmed the deaths of a61-year old female from Logan County, an 87-year old female from Ohio County,and a 72-year old female from Mercer County. We are deeply saddened bythis news, a loss to both the family and our state, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHRCabinet Secretary.

CASESPER COUNTY: Barbour (33), Berkeley (777), Boone(131), Braxton (9), Brooke (85), Cabell (501), Calhoun (8), Clay (19),Doddridge (6), Fayette (195), Gilmer (18), Grant (138), Greenbrier (99),Hampshire (91), Hancock (118), Hardy (66), Harrison (259), Jackson (194),Jefferson (332), Kanawha (1,281), Lewis (32), Lincoln (111), Logan (454),Marion (212), Marshall (134), Mason (91), McDowell (72), Mercer (284), Mineral(131), Mingo (222), Monongalia (1,072), Monroe (91), Morgan (37), Nicholas(47), Ohio (289), Pendleton (44), Pleasants (14), Pocahontas (42), Preston(136), Putnam (254), Raleigh (331), Randolph (220), Ritchie (3), Roane (25),Summers (18), Taylor (103), Tucker (11), Tyler (15), Upshur (41), Wayne (232),Webster (7), Wetzel (45), Wirt (8), Wood (297), Wyoming (55).

Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the localhealth department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain countymay not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual inquestion may have crossed the state border to be tested.Such is the case of Hampshire,Pendleton, and Randolph counties in this report.

Pleasevisit the dashboard located at http://www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more information.

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COVID-19 Daily Update 8-26-2020 - West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

Following individual human stories in a sprawling event like a global pandemic is a challenging task. Making thoughtful connections between the two is even harder. But this long read from The California Sunday Magazine on Americas first COVID-19 epicenter, a nursing home in Washington state, does the job with compelling and tragic precision.

It focuses on two inhabitants of a single room in the nursing facility, the Life Care Center of Kirkland, part of the largest privately held chain of long-term care centers in the US. It tracks how the coronavirus spread through the facility like a spectral haunting, and how underpaid and overworked staff battled against the odds to bring it under control.

Around the world, nursing homes have been hit hard by the pandemic, which is no surprise considering that their residents are some of the most vulnerable in society. In the US alone, as of mid-August, 177,129 nursing home residents have tested positive for COVID-19 and 45,958 have died from the disease. This means that nursing-home residents account for more than a quarter of total pandemic deaths, writes journalist Katie Engelhart.

In America, though, these individual tragedies connect to larger trends. As Engelhart lays out in rigorous detail, the financial and regulatory landscape of the US has seriously diminished the quality of care in nursing homes. The freakish architecture of health insurances is one issue, incentivizing management to treat patients with profit in mind:

At one Life Care facility in Florida, the entire rehab staff had signed a letter declaring that they had been encouraged to maximize reimbursement even when clinically inappropriate.

And the financialization of the industry is another. Nursing homes are lucrative businesses thanks to a regular supply of customers. This has attracted buyouts from private equity firms and owners concerned only with making money. Nursing homes are folded into complicated company structures that make it harder for patients to sue, while middle managers are brought in on bloated salaries, draining funds from frontline staff.

The results are grimly predictable, explains Engelhart:

Earlier this year, a Wharton SchoolNew York UniversityUniversity of Chicago research team found robust evidence that private-equity buyouts lead to declines in patient health and compliance with care standards. When nursing homes are bought by private-equity groups, the team concluded, frontline nursing staff are cut, and residents are more likely to be hospitalized.

Lax government regulations have also played a part. One study found that three-quarters of US nursing homes were understaffed before the pandemic, while 82 percent had been cited by the Government Accountability Office for failing to control the spread of infections between 2013 and 2017. These conditions were ripe for the pandemic to move in.

Engelharts piece is extremely affecting when detailing the plight of nursing home residents themselves. These are mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, whose tragedy is simply aging in a country that does not provide for them. As Engelhart puts it, many people see the tens of thousands of deaths in US nursing homes as evidence of a cultural abdication on the part of society. Weve failed to look after our elders and the human cost is staggering. Perhaps this pandemic can at least wake people up to the change that is needed.

Go read Engelharts full story right here.

Visit link:

Go read this damning story about the spread of COVID-19 in Americas first pandemic hotspot - The Verge

The Indian monsoon season is in full swing, drenching the streets of Mumbai and flooding the plains of Bihar. But dark clouds of another kinddisease, hunger and deathare also gathering fast.

India is now ahead of all other countries in terms of the number of new recorded COVID-19 cases per dayclose to 70,000 in mid-August. Thats about one fourth of world-wide new cases. Only two countries are anywhere close: Brazil and the United States; and India has lagged behind those two countries in achieving a reduction in daily cases.

Further, recorded cases in India are likely to be a small fraction of all COVID-19 infections. That could be true in many countries, but the ratio of infections to recorded cases seems particularly large in Indiaat least 20:1, judging from two recent serological surveys, in Delhi and Mumbai respectively. This would mean that India already had more than 50 million COVID-19 infections, compared with a recorded figure of 2.5 million.

The silver lining is that, for reasons that are as yet unclear, COVID-19 mortality in India seems relatively low. The same surveys suggest that the infection-fatality rate (IFR) may be as low as one per thousand. If so, India may not be heading towards a major mortality crisis, or rather a major crisis of COVID-19 mortality, at least relative to normal levels of mortality. COVID-19 deaths so far add up to less than 1 percent of annual deaths from all causes in India. Per million population, there have been just 38 so far, compared with more than 500 in the US.

Overall mortality may spike, however, for two reasons. First, routine health services have been massively displaced by COVID-19. So far, COVID-19 infections were heavily concentrated in large cities located in Indias more prosperous states: Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, among others. The preparedness of the health system is much higher there than elsewhere. But recorded cases are now rising fast in Indias poorer states, where health services are very fragile. As the COVID-19 crisis absorbs their meager resources, many public health centers have stopped providing routine services. Even child immunization has been discontinued for months in many states.

Consider the state of Bihar. If Bihar were a separate country, it would be one of the very poorest countries in the world, with a population of more than 100 million. About half of all children in Bihar are stunted. COVID-19 was late to reach Bihar, but recorded cases have recently crossed 100,000 and are now rising at 3 to 4 percent per day. The state has fewer than 40 doctors per 100,000 population, compared with 90 in India and more than 250 in the US. Firsthand accounts of life in Bihars public hospitals paint a grim picture of missing doctors, unattended patients, broken equipment and stray dogs. Where are people with routine health problems supposed to go?

The other reason for a possible mortality spike is that Indias prolonged national lockdown (from late March until unlock phases began in June) has destroyed millions of peoples livelihoods. Local lockdowns continue in many states and are likely to persist off and on for months. Unlike affluent countries, India has very little to show by way of a social security system, except for food subsidies and some relief work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The employment crisis has already hit poor households really hard: recent surveys by Dalberg, Azim Premji University, the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and others reveal extreme food insecurity during and after the lockdown. Just to cite one, 78 percent of the 25,000 respondents in the nationwide CSDS survey said that they had found it quite difficult or very difficult to feed their families during the lockdown. Acute food insecurity is very likely to translate into higher mortality. For children, it also means lasting damage from malnutrition.

To invoke Bihar again, more than half of the workforce there consists of casual laborers who live on the margin of subsistence at the best of times. A recent survey of some 20,000 returning migrant workers found that 60 percent were unable to ensure two square meals for all members of the family. With the local economy in the doldrums, except for farming, casual workers are heading for a prolonged period of underemployment and hunger. For good measure, Bihar is affected by devastating floods, as often happens at this time of the year. Yet the state government seems more preoccupied with the coming assembly elections than with these multiple crises.

The situation is not much better in other poverty-stricken states of India such as Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. With tax revenue a fraction of normal levels, state governments are finding it difficult to provide more than symbolic relief. Alas, the central government is doing little to help them. It did launch some limited relief measures during the national lockdown, such as free food-grain rations of five kilograms per person per month for two thirds of Indias population. But now it seems to have lost interest and left it to the state governments to handle the crisis.

In this as in other domains, the Indian government seems more focused on public relations than enlightened action. For a long time, it forcefully denied any community transmission of COVID-19, even as recorded cases were counted in millions. When an early analysis of official data exposed the disruption of routine health services, the central government retracted the data. Doctors and nurses critical of the governments crisis response have been muzzled or harassed, as have many journalists. Muddled statistics are routinely invoked to reassure the public that all is well: the Ministry of Health recently boasted, for instance, that COVID-19 recoveries had crossed the historic peak of 1.5 milliona meaningless achievement since COVID-19 has a recovery rate of more than 99 percent in India.

In its hurry to turn India into a viswaguru (world leader), the Modi government seems to have little patience for a humanitarian crisis. Yet denying a crisis is the surest way to make it worse.

Link:

India Is in Denial about the COVID-19 Crisis - Scientific American

Controversial Antigen Tests Could Be Key to Defeating COVID-19  The Pew Charitable Trusts

Link:

Controversial Antigen Tests Could Be Key to Defeating COVID-19 - The Pew Charitable Trusts

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Those numbers are people.

Its easy to forget, when youre taking a daily look at a dashboard tracking the coronavirus, at the closed businesses and unemployed workers across the state that mark the path of the recession, at efforts to educate Texas kids in classrooms or in their homes, or at the logistics of breaking the social distancing blues with some college football.

Every number is somebody.

Youve read about some of them in The Texas Tribune.

Like Holly Jackson, whose Austin nightclub is shuttered and whose employees are furloughed, or Elizabeth and Ryan McNiel, stuck in the same situation with their bar in Sabinal. Grant Tran, a senior at Texas State University in San Marcos, where classes started this week. Tenants like Rolando Pulido of Houston, who fears an eviction notice like those delivered to several of his neighbors.

Or Adolfo Fito Alvarado Jr., a chaplain at Doctors Hospital at Renaissance in Edinburg killed by COVID-19 last month.

You havent read about most of them, and you wont get the chance. There are far too many. But the personal accounts that do get told are a reminder that each statistic has a face, and a life.

As of Monday, COVID-19 had killed at least 11,395 Texans. That included 1,361 over the previous week, a few more than eight Texans dead from the virus every hour of every day. For many of us, checking the pandemic numbers is a daily habit. There were 5,019 people in Texas hospitals Monday who had tested positive for the coronavirus, or about half the number of the July hospitalization peak. Three of four hospital beds in the state were in use, including 9.31% in use by COVID-19 patients. The seven-day average number of new cases per day was 2,754 at the start of the week. That, too, has dropped dramatically from a July peak, but remains higher than the daily increases before mid-June. Overall, the state has 580,384 confirmed cases.

That data is useful to medical professionals and public health policymakers looking for a macro view of the pandemics effect on Texas. Its useful to voters trying to decide whether to keep or replace the elected officials theyve got.

Some numbers are big enough pandemic, recession, schools that almost every Texan has been affected or knows someone whos been affected.

Its easy to lose the meaning of $250 million in government spending that buys 716,000 laptop computers and tablets, and 295,000 internet hot spots for public school students in Texas.

Those resources serve hundreds of thousands of students who wouldnt be getting any lessons right now unless their classrooms were open and available during the pandemic that many students who wouldnt have a choice between attending school in person and getting the same lessons at home.

Its hard to get the scale of that many computers and students in your head. You can try: If you sat kids in front of each of those new computers, giving each just 2 feet of space, the line would stretch 271 miles, enough to reach from Fort Worth to San Antonio.

The decisions about whether to keep schools open affect about 5.5 million kids, or roughly 1 in every 6 Texans. Thats before you count the parents and families and employers and educators and everyone else whos got a direct daily stake in public education.

Those big numbers are still hard to imagine. But there are enough people involved, in that case, that you almost certainly know someone whos affected. Its family and friends, not statistics.

Remember, as you watch the political parade whether your party is up this week or was up last week that the big picture too often obscures whats going on in the lives of real people.

When the speakers at political conventions talk about federal unemployment insurance supplements ending for 347,700 Texans, thats 347,700 households in financial peril, people literally trying to figure out how to keep the lights on, the rent paid, food on the table and clothes on the kids. If they have time, they can worry about laptops and tablets and internet access to school.

The numbers are numbing abstractions. We get used to them and watch how they change. We look at the charts and the maps. We read stories about public and private efforts to help, to spend money, to make the good numbers rise and the bad numbers fall.

Thats important: Each of those numbers is a real person.

Link:

Those arent just COVID-19 numbers. Theyre Texans. - The Texas Tribune

Brazil's budget showdown, COVID-19 severity and 70 years of scientific acronyms  Nature.com

More:

Brazil's budget showdown, COVID-19 severity and 70 years of scientific acronyms - Nature.com

TheWest Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of 10:00 a.m., on August 25,2020, there have been 403,394 total confirmatorylaboratory results received for COVID-19, with 9,395 totalcases and 187 deaths.

DHHR has confirmed the deaths of a65-year old male from Logan County, a72-year old female from Logan County, a 72-year old female from Logan County, an86-year old female from Taylor County, a 73-year old female from Wyoming County,a 92-year old female from Grant County, a 64-year old female from KanawhaCounty, and a 51-year old female from Cabell County. Pleasejoin with me in sending our deepest condolences to these families as they grievethe passing of their loved ones, said DHHR Cabinet Secretary Bill J. Crouch. Every life lost to this pandemic is atragedy.

CASESPER COUNTY: Barbour (33), Berkeley (769), Boone(130), Braxton (9), Brooke (85), Cabell (493), Calhoun (8), Clay (19),Doddridge (6), Fayette (188), Gilmer (18), Grant (134), Greenbrier (98),Hampshire (92), Hancock (118), Hardy (66), Harrison (258), Jackson (192),Jefferson (328), Kanawha (1,246), Lewis (32), Lincoln (111), Logan (446),Marion (211), Marshall (134), Mason (86), McDowell (66), Mercer (276), Mineral(131), Mingo (219), Monongalia (1,059), Monroe (79), Morgan (37), Nicholas(44), Ohio (289), Pendleton (48), Pleasants (14), Pocahontas (42), Preston(136), Putnam (252), Raleigh (328), Randolph (221), Ritchie (3), Roane (25),Summers (18), Taylor (100), Tucker (11), Tyler (15), Upshur (40), Wayne (230),Webster (7), Wetzel (45), Wirt (7), Wood (292), Wyoming (51).

Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the localhealth department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain countymay not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual inquestion may have crossed the state border to be tested.Such is the case of Lincoln,Marshall, Monongalia, and Taylor counties in this report.

Pleasevisit the dashboard located at http://www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more information.

See more here:

COVID-19 Daily Update 8-25-2020 - West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources