Category: Covid-19

RALEIGH - More than 9,000 North Carolina residents are presumed to have recovered from COVID-19 as of May 11, according to calculations by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has yet to establish a standard definition of "recovery" for COVID-19, and the long-term impacts of the virus on the respiratory system and other vital organs remains unclear.

More: Henderson mother cared for baby with COVID-19. As bills mounted, strangers helped.

NCDHHS calculated that 9,115 North Carolinians about 60.9% of the state's total lab-confirmed cases have likely recovered from COVID-19.

That's based on a median recovery time of two weeks for COVID-19 patients who don't have to be hospitalized and 28days for patients who are hospitalized, according to Dr. Mandy Cohen, Secretary of the NC Department of Health and Human Services.

More: COVID-19 may be novel, but history shows a pandemic path we can learn from | OPINION

Those medians exclude patients who ultimately die from COVID-19, she added.

Each patient's actual recovery times could be shorter or longer based on a number of factors, the NCDHHS emphasized among them the patient's age and underlying health conditions, as well as when they first seek treatment.

The 14 and 28-day figures were chosen since the time between sample collection and the resolution of symptoms hasn't been reported for all of North Carolina's COVID-19 cases, a May 11 release said.

Are people who have recovered fromCOVID-19 still contagious?

Experts still aren't certain exactly when during the course of recovery a COVID-19 patient is no longer able to transmit the virus to others.

Researchers have established that COVID-19 patients can infect others even before they experience their first symptom, such as a dry cough or fever.

Preliminary studies suggest that viral shedding the mechanism by which viruses are spread is highest at the very start of the illness for patients with mild cases of COVID-19 and declines at the onset of symptoms, according to the CDC and preprint studies on medRXiv.

More: Think you have COVID-19? Buncombe now has a digital 'self-checker' for symptoms

It remains unknown whether someone who has recovered from COVID-19 can contract the virus again.

As the body fights off an infection like COVID-19, itproduces proteins called antibodies that help the immune system identifyeach viral particle for destruction.

More: With her husband dying from COVID-19, Asheville woman fought the virus, too

After defeating some diseases, including the measles,the body continues to produce antibodies for that virus for the rest of its life that's how the body "remembers" a disease and is immune to it.

Blood antibody tests are commercially available for COVID-19 and have been used to determine whether a patient has had the new coronavirus in the past.

But researchers are still unsure how long the body produces antibodies after recovering from COVID-19, and how strong their immunity is while antibodies persist.

Even people who have recovered from COVID-19 should abide by all social distancing mandates, public health officials say, and behave as though they could contract the virus again.

Elizabeth Anne Brown is the trending news reporter for the Citizen Times. Reach her ateabrown@citizentimes.com, or follow her onTwitter @eabrown18.

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Coronavirus: How many people have recovered from COVID-19 in NC? - Citizen Times

Dr. Veena Jones was on her morning commute from her home in Menlo Park to her office at Lucile Packard Childrens Hospital in Palo Alto when she learned of lab test results that nearly jolted her to a stop right in the middle of El Camino Real.

The 6-month-old patient she was on her way to release after treatment for a rare inflammatory condition called Kawasaki disease had tested positive for the coronavirus. It was March 16, just before the statewide shelter-in-place order and long before there was any reason to consider a link between COVID-19 and the feverish and inflammatory symptoms of Kawasaki disease.

Dr. Jones quickly conferred with her colleague, Dr. Roshni Mathew, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Packard, to see if there was any precedent for this in the medical journals. They found none because Jones had hit on the first recorded diagnosis of a child with both COVID-19 and Kawasaki disease.

That very day, I had a discussion with Dr. Mathew that we should share this with the rest of the world, Jones told The Chronicle. Their paper, COVID-19 & Kawasaki Disease: Novel Virus & Novel Case will be published in the Journal of Hospital Pediatrics in June. But it has been rushed into prepublication online and gained urgency in the past week when it was revealed that 73 children in New York had been hospitalized, with three fatalities, for a mysterious disease being described as pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome.

The New York children had tested positive for the coronavirus or its antibodies, but neither they nor Jones patient, a South Bay girl identified only as Zara, showed respiratory symptoms. She has since gone home and passed a 14-day quarantine, and nobody knows yet whether her condition was the same as that of the children in New York, with additional cases having been reported in Chicago, Los Angeles, the United Kingdom and Spain.

We dont know exactly what these patients are presenting. All we know is that they look like Kawasaki disease because they have cardiac involvement, said Dr. Mathew.

A disease that mainly affects children ages 1 to 4, Kawasaki is a hyper-inflammatory condition whose cause has so far eluded doctors. It can also be found in children younger than 1, as was the case in Palo Alto.

Symptoms include rash, swelling or redness of the lips or throat, swollen lymph nodes, particularly in the neck, swelling of hands and feet, and pink eye. About 25% have some changes in their coronary arteries that can lead to an aneurysm, said Dr. Rachel Wattier, a UCSF specialist who cares for children with infectious disease.

Concerns mounted Monday after new reports surfaced out of New York that coronavirus inflammatory syndrome in children was causing heart and kidney failure. Medical experts in the Bay Area said that because of early intervention in the spread of the coronavirus, a cluster of children experiencing similar inflammatory syndromes as those seen in New York is unlikely in Northern California.

COVID has been around now for a few months, and what we know is that children are not affected as much, said Dr. Mathew. Now, there is this information that we are getting that there is a subset of pediatric patients that are having this multisystem inflammatory condition. I dont think anyone knows for sure if there is a clear link (to the coronavirus), but there is a suspicion of it.

Nor is there a clear link between Kawasaki and the coronavirus.

Dr. Lyn Dos Santos, the pediatric clinical medical co-director at John Muir Health/Stanford Childrens Health Joint Venture, said she normally sees 15 to 20 Kawasaki cases a year. Since January, she has seen about five cases. Two of those cases were children diagnosed in mid-March and April, but neither were coronavirus-positive, she said.

Kawasaki is a disease that is well known but not well understood, Wattier said.

Its a hyper-inflammatory condition and it doesnt have a specific known cause, though its thought to be associated as a postinfectious syndrome in a variety of different infections, she said.

The babys doctors are careful to differentiate their patient from the clusters of cases in New York and elsewhere because she had classic Kawasaki disease, and none of the other children have received that diagnosis. But the symptoms are similar enough that there might be a connection somewhere. Mathew speculates that it could have been the coronavirus that triggered both the case of Kawasaki disease in Zara, and the cases of pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome elsewhere.

The body has already seen the infection, but then the immune response goes into override, she said. We can say it is a suspicion, added Jones, but not definitively.

There was no suspicion of either COVID-19 or Kawasaki when Zaras mother, identified as Mahera, brought her to the Mountain View clinic operated by the Sutter Health Palo Alto Medical Foundation on March 10. She was given medication for the fever and sent home, with instructions to watch for worsening symptoms. Three nights later, the baby was back with a body rash, redness of the eyes, and swollen hands and feet all common symptoms of Kawasaki.

There is no definitive test for the disease, but a blood test revealed enough of the markers that she was transferred to Packard, which has a reputation for treating kids with rare afflictions. Kawasaki qualifies. Although more common in Japan, it afflicts between 4,000 and 5,000 children in America per year.

It was early in the pandemic and the patient would not then have been suspected of suffering from COVID-19, but Packard had an early supply of tests and Zara received one as a precaution because she had a fever. She was then given a normal course of medication for Kawasaki, and her symptoms improved dramatically.

Two days after the test, the results came back positive for the coronavirus. It was the first positive test for the coronavirus at Packard and may have been the first in the nation or the world for both Kawasaki and COVID-19.

There was an element of surprise, and we had to put our heads together with a safe plan to send her home, said Jones, who is affiliated with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation but works at Packard. We had not been expecting this.

Zara exhibited no upper respiratory symptoms, so after Jones carefully interviewed her mother, she was sent home with both mother and daughter instructed to maintain in quarantine for 14 days, which they did. Also requiring quarantine was Dr. Evie Huang, whod spent more than half an hour treating Zara at the Mountain View clinic before Zara was tested. A contact history of the family was taken, and none had traveled or believed they had been in contact with anyone who had tested positive.

Typically people get it from household contacts, Mathew said. At this point we just dont know how she was exposed to it. Its a mystery.

Zara, meanwhile, is being monitored and has passed two echocardiograms in the past two months, and ultrasounds have been normal.

She seems to be OK, Jones said. She has no symptoms of COVID.

Sam Whiting and Sarah Ravani are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com, sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @samwhitingsf, @SarRavani

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Bay Area babys case may be first that links COVID-19 to Kawasaki disease - San Francisco Chronicle

When James Charlie Mahoney and his older brother Melvin went to medical school in the 80s, black doctors were hard to find.

We remember what it was like when you didnt see anybody that looked like you, said Melvin, an internal medicine doctor who worked alongside Mahoney. Even now this group comprises only 5% of the physician workforce.

Mahoney wasnt a crusader, Melvin said. Instead, he approached everything he did with calm resolve, eschewing hospital hierarchies, and leaving the door open for those who followed.

Mahoney would go on to become a respected pulmonologist and pillar of his Brooklyn university hospital system, who led his team into the Covid-19 crisis. But he couldnt avoid the dangers that frontline workers face particularly as a lung doctor treating a respiratory illness.

Like many public hospitals in New York, Mahoneys workplace didnt have enough protective equipment at the onset of the pandemic and staffing was strained. The exposure was inescapable.

He was handling patients and codes [patients needing intensive intervention] every five to 10 minutes, said Purna Atluri, a gastroenterologist who worked with Mahoney for more than 20 years. He was doing everything he could.

Atluri was concerned about his friend because he was heavyset, a risk factor for the virus. But for weeks, Mahoney seemed healthy and mostly worried about his sister, who had experienced coronavirus complications.

That would change in a matter of days.

Hes one of our legends hes one of our giants, said neurologist and colleague Julien Cavanagh.

Mahoney started working alongside his older brother when he was eight years old at three jobs, no less. Growing up in military housing on Long Island, New York, they put in hours at a laundromat, German delicatessen and luncheonette.

Even back then, people noticed quiet, intelligent Mahoney. He was really loved by everyone, Melvin said.

During college, Mahoney transported patients at Long Beach hospital a job that revealed parts of the hospital that physicians often overlook. He could see what it was like to be at a different level he could see if a patient didnt get their food, or if someone took it away too quickly, Melvin said.

A higher-up at the hospital recommended Mahoney for SUNY Downstate Medical School. He graduated in 1986, and worked at SUNY Downstates Intensive Care Unit and the affiliated Kings County hospital, until the end.

As Mahoney rose through the ranks, he continued to notice the details. After his sister, Saundra Chisolm threw him a 50th birthday party, he chided her for seating esteemed physicians at the head tables, instead of administrative staff.

He didnt treat people like underlings, Chisolm said. He would talk to housekeeping like he would talk to the chief of the hospital.

He eventually took over the ICU. People called him a teddy bear, because he was kind and soft-spoken. But he was assertive if he noticed injustice which, like many physicians of color, he experienced throughout his career.

Thats where he would stand his ground, Chisolm said. He told that to a lot of his residents who were people of color: youre just as smart as everyone else.

Mahoneys steadfast, egalitarian nature made him a favorite among patients. His hospital system serves a majority black, low-income population with high rates of chronic disease. But he would never consider a patients insurance status or hesitate to call in other specialists.

Anything Mahoney learned, he taught. Cavanagh, who trained under Mahoney, said he could call him at 3am with questions about a patient, and never feel ashamed. But Mahoney demanded excellence.

He was someone you think of when writing your [patient] notes, Cavanagh said. He was someone that you wanted to make proud.

He was handling patients and codes every five to ten minutes

Mahoneys teaching extended beyond work. He coached baseball and football teams in Baldwin, Long Island, where he and his ex-wife Lisa Johnson Mahoney raised three children: Stephanie, Jamie and Ryan.

In January, Mahoney, had planned to scale back hospital hours. He went on a Caribbean cruise with his father and sister one of 50 cruises in his lifetime. He said, thats probably gonna be my retirement cruise, Chisolm said.

Then the pandemic hit.

Mahoney was well-trained to treat Covid-19 patients. And public hospitals, already stretched thin, were bracing for an influx of patients. So he went running into the fire, Melvin said. Brooklyn has had 40,000 Covid-19 cases, and the virus hit black and Latino communities the hardest.

The last time I saw him was at the beginning of the pandemic, Cavanagh said. I said, are we going to get through this? And he said, oh yeah, were going to get through this.

But in early April, Mahoney started coughing and running a fever. On Easter Sunday, after Chisolm recovered, Mahoneys family noticed on a video chat that he didnt look well. The next day, he was admitted to his own hospital, SUNY Downstate.

At first, Mahoney seemed to be improving he gave his family a thumbs up on FaceTime. Then his health deteriorated and he was transferred to NYU Langone for a higher level of care. He died on 27 April.

Physicians at SUNY Downstate said Mahoneys death has left a hole in the institution after his three decades there. He was what we call a lifer at the hospital, said colleague Alex Hieu Ly.

In early May, Chisolm was home in Long Island, grieving her brother and awaiting a different kind of news: her daughter-in-law was about to have a baby. The moment was bittersweet.

Hes given us a lot of fodder, she said. They have plenty of material to talk about for years to come. She hoped her granddaughter would take after Mahoney.

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A legend at a Brooklyn hospital dies of Covid-19: 'He ran into the fire' - The Guardian

Life under lockdown has turned our everyday world upside down. With economic activity on hold in many countries, some once-prosperous businesses face an uncertain future. But for some, the pandemic has had an altogether different impact.

Here are the sectors finding an unexpected boost during the pandemic:

1. Cycling

In some countries, cycling offers a way to escape the confines of lockdown.

Image: REUTERS/Molly Darlington

People are taking to two wheels in droves, both as a way to exercise while obeying social distancing rules and to avoid crowded public transport. Bike stores have been declared an essential service in the UK, with many shops seeing a spike in demand.

The Association of Cycle Traders (ACT) told the Guardian newspaper its members were reporting strong sales of more moderately priced new cycles and a boom in repair services. A growing number of people are dusting down their old bikes and rediscovering the joys of cycling. Business at the London Cycle Workshop has doubled, according to the BBC, as people seek repairs.

A similar trend is happening in places like Berlin, where city streets are being converted into bike lanes to encourage more cyclists. (In other countries like France, Spain and Italy, riding bikes was not permitted during lockdown.)

2. Home fitnessAs quarantines kept people indoors, they increasingly turned to home fitness regimes to stay healthy.

In China, where the first COVID-19 lockdown was implemented, sales of home exercise equipment soared. JD.com said sales of machines such as ellipticals and treadmills nearly doubled, while rowers jumped 133%.

This trend is echoed in other parts of the world, as people stay away from crowded gyms and exercise classes. Online sales of yoga mats have climbed the top-sellers list of major retailers in the US. And UK department stores like John Lewis are seeing a significant increase in home gym equipment, according to the BBC.

3. Drive-in movies

Drive-in movie theatres like this one in Florida allow people to go out while obeying social distancing rules.

Image: REUTERS/Marco Bello

In the US, drive-in movie theatres could be making a comeback, following years of decline due to cinemas moving into shopping malls and services like Netflix bringing the big screen to peoples homes.

Social distancing rules have closed many regular movie theatres. Drive-ins offer a way to escape the confines of home quarantine and be entertained while keeping interaction with others to a minimum.

While major cinema chains in the US and Canada have suffered the industry's lowest box office weekend sales in 20 years, some open air cinemas are thriving. Drive-ins in California, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri are open for business with some reporting higher ticket sales, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Many independent and smaller grocery stores have seen business increase during the COVID-19 pandemic. As more customers shop for groceries online and large supermarkets run out of stock of essential lines, people are turning to local grocers to top up their shopping.

Coronavirus has changed our shopping habits.

Image: YouGov

Research by YouGov in the UK shows nearly a quarter of people in Britain have visited local grocery stores more since lockdown restrictions were imposed. The survey found a 5% increase in peoples use of local butchers or fishmongers, and a small increase in visits to speciality food shops.

The same trend is happening in the US. President of Americas National Grocer Association Greg Ferrara told ABC News that independent grocers are helping large chains meet unprecedented demand.

A new strain of Coronavirus, COVID 19, is spreading around the world, causing deaths and major disruption to the global economy.

Responding to this crisis requires global cooperation among governments, international organizations and the business community, which is at the centre of the World Economic Forums mission as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.

The Forum has created the COVID Action Platform, a global platform to convene the business community for collective action, protect peoples livelihoods and facilitate business continuity, and mobilize support for the COVID-19 response. The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.

As an organization, the Forum has a track record of supporting efforts to contain epidemics. In 2017, at our Annual Meeting, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines. CEPI is currently supporting the race to develop a vaccine against this strand of the coronavirus.

5. DIY and Home improvementIreland has seen a sales boom in DIY and home repairs as people fill quarantine time by painting walls, fixing woodwork and tending to the garden.

The Irish Times reports unprecedented demand at some DIY stores, with long queues standing the recommended 2-metre distance from one another. The same distancing rules are in force at the checkout, but customers describe busy scenes inside some shops as people stock up on household products and take advantage of plant sales.

In Wales, Wrexham plant seed seller Justseed has stopped taking orders for some products due to excessive demand. Were catching up with a massive surge the company told the BBC.

Garden centre Marshalls in the UK has asked customers to be patient when ordering in the face of unprecedented demand.

Other lockdowners are turning to baking, knitting and handicrafts. Londons Liberty department store has seen a 380% increase in sewing accessories and almost 230% uptick in craft kits, the BBC reports.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with our Terms of Use.

Written by

Johnny Wood, Senior Writer, Formative Content

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Consumers have flocked to these 5 industries under COVID-19 - World Economic Forum

PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) The death toll from COVID-19 increased to 39 on Tuesday when the latest test results were reported by the South Dakota Department of Health.

The five new deaths included one male and four females. One death was listed as a man age 30-39, the first in South Dakota listed in that age range. One was listed age 50-59, one was 60-69 and two were listed as 80-years old or older. All the new deaths were reported in Minnehaha County, which accounts for 34 deaths in the state.

Active cases in South Dakota decreased to 1,315, down 78 from Monday (1,393).

Total positive cases are at 3,663, up 49 from Monday (3,614). Total recoveries are at 2,309, up 122 from Monday (2,187). There were 73 more recoveries than new positive cases announced Tuesday.

Current hospitalizations are at 74, down four from Monday (78). Total hospitalizations are at 271, up eight from Monday (263).

Negative tests are at 21,534, up from Monday (20,964).

There were 619 tests reported Tuesday. For the past six days, testing has been over 600 tests reported each day.

Total cases in Minnehaha County increased to 2,978. There have been 1,851 recoveries and 34 deaths for a total of 1,127 active cases in the states largest county.

Lincoln County is listed at 190.

Brown County increased to 132, five more from Monday (127).

Stay with KELOLAND News for more coverage.

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Five new COVID-19 related deaths announced Tuesday - KELOLAND.com

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Covid-19: why are some people losing their taste and smell? podcast - The Guardian

Hamilton Medical of Reno and General Motors joined forces to build factory capable of building thousands of ventilators in weeks. Reno Gazette Journal

The state has added a number of new charts, graphs and other data points to its online COVID-19 dashboard, greatly increasing the amount of information publicly available to Nevadans.

Some of those new graphs are just new ways to visualize data that was already available like three new charts displaying how many people weretested on a given day, how many tested positiveand how many people died but others are entirely new, and answer some pressing questions about the coronavirus pandemic in Nevada.

A chart showing the cumulative number of cases in Nevada and how many people tested positive on a given day.(Photo: Nevada Health Alliance)

The charts featuring new information there's three of them pertain to the growth rates of Nevada's COVID-19 cases and related deaths, hospitalizations and capacity, and the state's cumulative positivity rate.

But what does all this new information mean, and why's it important?

The Reno Gazette Journal asked the Nevada Health Alliance to explain the new information on its dashboard. Kyra Morgan, Nevada's state biostatistician, sent an explanation of the new data.

Charts showing the daily growth rate of new COVID-19 cases and deaths.(Photo: Nevada Health Alliance)

Wondering how quickly COVID-19 is spreading in Nevada? This tab on the dashboard is for you.

These two charts, one for cases and one for deaths, represent the amount cases and deaths have grown over time.

"The growth rate of COVID-19 may change over time due to actual changes in the growth, or for reasons such as implementation of new testing strategies or changes to control measures that are in place," Morgan wrote in an email to the RGJ.

As the state works to slow the growth of the virus, progress can be seen in these charts.

Charts on the Nevada Health Alliance dashboard showing confirmed and suspected COVID-19 hospitalizations.(Photo: Nevada Health Alliance)

These charts, fueled by data from the Nevada Hospital Association, shows how taxed the state's healthcare system is by COVID-19.

This data, specifically if the trend of hospitalizations is decreasing,was one of the metrics used by the governor's office to determine if the state could move into phase 1 of reopening.

Ventilator use, the number of COVID-19 patients currently in the ICU and day-over-day changes in hospitalizations are also measured here.

Hospitalizations, ICU bed use and ventilator use all were on a relatively downward trajectory, but appear to betrending back up as ofMay 9, the day phase 1 reopening began.

It's not clear what metrics will be used to determine if the state is ready for phase 2 of reopening, thoughGov. Steve Sisolak said phase 1 would likely last until the end of the month.

A chart showing Nevada's test positivity rate compared against the World Health Organization's maximum positivity rate recommended before reopening.(Photo: Nevada Health Alliance)

Another metric the governor's office used to enter phase 1 of reopening, a chart measuring Nevada's test positivity rate is now available on the Nevada Health Alliance dashboard.

This chart shows the percentage of people who tested positive on a given dayout of the total number of people tested that day.

"In general, if a high percentage of tests are coming back positive, that is indicative that there are many more cases that have gone undetected," Morgan explained.

Right now, this chart paints a good picture of Nevada's fight against COVID-19.

"Nevada'sdata shows that as we expand testing, the test positivity rate goes down," Morgan wrote."We have seen a significant decline in this measure since April 25."

The chart also compares Nevada's positivity rate against the maximum positivity rate recommended by the World Health Organization before an area reopens.

Nevada dipped below the WHO's maximum recommended rate of 10 percentfor the first time on May 11.

Visitdhcfp.nv.gov/covid19/and click on the "COVID-19 Data Dashboard" link to see the dashboard.

Sam Gross is a breaking news reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal who covers wildfires, emergencies and more. Support his work by subscribing to RGJ.com.

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There's new data on Nevada's COVID-19 dashboard. Here's what it means, why it's important - Reno Gazette Journal

A modelling group convened by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS has estimated that if efforts are not made to mitigate and overcome interruptions in health services and supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic, a six-month disruption of antiretroviral therapy could lead to more than 500 000 extra deaths from AIDS-related illnesses, including from tuberculosis, in sub-Saharan Africa in 20202021. In 2018, an estimated 470 000 people died of AIDS-related deaths in the region.

There are many different reasons that could cause services to be interruptedthis modelling exercise makes it clear that communities and partners need to take action now as the impact of a six-month disruption of antiretroviral therapy could effectively set the clock on AIDS-related deaths back to 2008, when more than 950 000 AIDS-related deaths were observed in the region. And people would continue to die from the disruption in large numbers for at least another five years, with an annual average excess in deaths of 40% over the next half a decade. In addition, HIV service disruptions could also have some impact on HIV incidence in the next year.

The terrible prospect of half a million more people in Africa dying of AIDS-related illnesses is like stepping back into history, said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization.

We must read this as a wake-up call to countries to identify ways to sustain all vital health services. For HIV, some countries are already taking important steps, for example ensuring that people can collect bulk packs of treatment, and other essential commodities, including self-testing kits, from drop-off points, which relieves pressure on health services and the health workforce. We must also ensure that global supplies of tests and treatments continue to flow to the countries that need them, added Dr Tedros.

In sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 25.7 million people were living with HIV and 16.4 million (64%) were taking antiretroviral therapy in 2018. Those people now risk having their treatment interrupted because HIV services are closed or are unable to supply antiretroviral therapy because of disruptions to the supply chain or because services simply become overwhelmed due to competing needs to support the COVID-19 response.

The COVID-19 pandemic must not be an excuse to divert investment from HIV, said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS. There is a risk that the hard-earned gains of the AIDS response will be sacrificed to the fight against COVID-19, but the right to health means that no one disease should be fought at the expense of the other.

When treatment is adhered to, a persons HIV viral load drops to an undetectable level, keeping that person healthy and preventing onward transmission of the virus. When a person is unable to take antiretroviral therapy regularly, the viral load increases, impacting the persons health, which can ultimately lead to death. Even relatively short-term interruptions to treatment can have a significant negative impact on a persons health and potential to transmit HIV.

This research brought together five teams of modellers using different mathematical models to analyse the effects of various possible disruptions to HIV testing, prevention and treatment services caused by COVID-19.

Each model looked at the potential impact of treatment disruptions of three months or six months on AIDS mortality and HIV incidence in sub-Saharan Africa. In the six-month disruption scenario, estimates of excess AIDS-related deaths in one year ranged from 471 000 to 673 000, making it inevitable that the world will miss the global 2020 target of fewer than 500 000 AIDS-related deaths worldwide.

Shorter disruptions of three months would see a reduced but still significant impact on HIV deaths. More sporadic interruptions of antiretroviral therapy supply would lead to sporadic adherence to treatment, leading to the spread of HIV drug resistance, with long-term consequences for future treatment success in the region.

Disrupted services could also reverse gains made in preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Since 2010, new HIV infections among children in sub-Saharan Africa have declined by 43%, from 250 000 in 2010 to 140 000 in 2018, owing to the high coverage of HIV services for mothers and their children in the region. Curtailment of these services by COVID-19 for six months could see new child HIV infections rise drastically, by as much as 37% in Mozambique, 78% in Malawi, 78% in Zimbabwe and 104% in Uganda.

Other significant effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the AIDS response in sub-Saharan Africa that could lead to additional mortality include reduced quality clinical care owing to health facilities becoming overstretched and a suspension of viral load testing, reduced adherence counselling and drug regimen switches. Each model also considered the extent to which a disruption to prevention services, including suspension of voluntary medical male circumcision, interruption of condom availability and suspension of HIV testing, would impact HIV incidence in the region.

The research highlights the need for urgent efforts to ensure the continuity of HIV prevention and treatment services in order to avert excess HIV-related deaths and to prevent increases in HIV incidence during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be important for countries to prioritize shoring up supply chains and ensuring that people already on treatment are able to stay on treatment, including by adopting or reinforcing policies such as multimonth dispensing of antiretroviral therapy in order to reduce requirements to access health-care facilities for routine maintenance, reducing the burden on overwhelmed health-care systems.

Every death is a tragedy, added Ms Byanyima. We cannot sit by and allow hundreds of thousands of people, many of them young, to die needless deaths. I urge governments to ensure that every man, women and child living with HIV gets regular supplies of antiretroviral therapysomething thats literally a life-saver.

Sources:

Jewell B, Mudimu E, Stover J, et al for the HIV Modelling consortium, Potential effects of disruption to HIV programmes in sub-Saharan Africa caused by COVID-19: results from multiple models. Pre-print, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12279914.v1, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12279932.v1.

Alexandra B. Hogan, Britta Jewell, Ellie Sherrard-Smith et al. The potential impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on HIV, TB and malaria in low- and middle-income countries. Imperial College London (01-05-2020). doi: https://doi.org/10.25561/78670.

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizationsUNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bankand works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

WHO

The World Health Organization provides global leadership in public health within the United Nations system. Founded in 1948, WHO works with194 Member States, across six regions and from more than 150 offices,to promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable. Our goal for 2019-2023 is to ensure that a billion more people have universal health coverage, to protect a billion more people from health emergencies, and provide a further billion people with better health and wellbeing.

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The cost of inaction: COVID-19-related service disruptions could cause hundreds of thousands of extra deaths from HIV - World Health Organization

The pandemic that has shuttered economies around the world has also battered education systems in developing and developed countries. Some 1.5 billion students close to 90% of all primary, secondary and tertiary learners in the world are no longer able to physically go to school. The impact has been dramatic and transformative as educators scramble to put in place workable short-term solutions for remote teaching and learning, particularly in emerging markets, where students and schools face additional challenges related to financing and available infrastructure.

While each level of education faces its unique challenges, it is the higher education segment that may end up, by necessity, triggering a learning revolution. Universities are distinctive in that their students are both old enough to handle the rigours of online work and technologically savvy enough to navigate new platforms. The real challenge lies for the institutions in which they have enrolled. Can traditional, campus-based universities adapt by choosing the right technologies and approaches for educating and engaging their students? The successes and failures that unfold should give us all a better grasp of what is possible.

Right now, video-conferencing apps like Zoom and Webex are throwing universities a lifeline. However, lecturers are still struggling to maintain the same depth of engagement with students they could have in a classroom setting. They need to find solutions and fast to avoid a dip in the quality of education they are providing. Online education platforms such as Coursera, an IFC client with a global presence, can play a useful role by tapping their expertise in online programme design, choice of tech platform, and digital marketing to develop the best content either with or for the traditional players.

With the online segment still comprising a small fraction of the $2.2 trillion global higher education market less than 2%, according to market intelligence firm HolonIQ the market is ripe for disruption. The appetite from students for online offerings will likely grow because of COVID-19. Even before the pandemic, many universities were seeing declines in enrolment for campus-based programmes and parallel increases in uptake of their online courses. With COVID-19, we are seeing how yesterdays disruptors can become todays lifeguards. While traditional institutions once viewed online education as a threat, it has come to their rescue.

The adoption of online solutions in recent months has been unprecedented. In the short term, educators are applying a first aid solution by switching entirely from in-person to remote instruction, a move that has been forced upon them by sudden mandatory campus closures. But they are quickly realizing that remote learning is just a baby step experiment in the long journey to offering online education that has been conceived as such, which includes effective student engagement tools and teacher training. Some of the partnerships sparked between universities, online education companies and tech providers may continue beyond the pandemic.

As painful and stressful a time as this is, it may fashion a long overdue and welcome rebirth of our education systems. The pandemic has been a great leveller in a way, giving all stakeholders (educators, learners, policy-makers and society at large) in developed and developing countries a better understanding of our current education systems vulnerabilities and shortcomings. It has underscored how indispensable it is for our populations to be digitally literate to function and progress in a world in which social distancing, greater digitalization of services and more digitally-centered communications may increasingly become the norm. More fundamentally, COVID-19 is causing us to challenge deep-rooted notions of when, where, and how we deliver education, of the role of colleges and universities, the importance of lifelong learning, and the distinction we draw between traditional and non-traditional learners.

This pandemic has also made people realize how dependent we are on so-called low-skilled workers to keep our lives going. During shutdowns, lockdowns, curfews, its these workers who are on the front lines, working multiple shifts to maintain delivery and take care of our basic needs. Over time, automation will continue to eat into these jobs. While there will always be services provided by low-skilled workers, most new jobs will require higher skills levels. Being able to reskill and upskill in this rapidly changing world is not only a necessity but an economic imperative.

COVID-19 has struck our education system like a lightning bolt and shaken it to its core. Just as the First Industrial Revolution forged todays system of education, we can expect a different kind of educational model to emerge from COVID-19.

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COVID-19 is sparking a revolution in higher education - World Economic Forum

SALT LAKE CITY (CBS Local) Researchers in Utah say they are developing a new way to detect COVID-19 with your smartphone.

What started as a device to help detect a Zika virus could become be programmed to identify COVID-19 instead, say researchers in Utah.

Our prototype is going to be on the order of the size of a quarter, and it would be communicating with a cellphone using the Bluetooth link, Massood Tabib-Azar, a University of Utah professor and the lead engineer on the project, told KSTU.

The device would be able to test for COVID-19 if someone were to breathe, cough, sneeze or blow on a sensor. The results would then be displayed on a cell phone within 60 seconds.

It could also test for the virus on surfaces by using a swab and placing it onto the sensor.

The sensor will be reusable because it would destroy the previous sample with a small electrical current.

Tabib-Azar says he wants to make it possible to send the results to health agencies, too.

Youd push the button and it can send to a central location, Centers for Disease Control or any other authority that youd select in your options, and then in real time can update the map, he said.

Tabib-Azar says he hopes to have a working prototype in two months. Clinical trials would take another month.

In principle, we can put these devices in everybodys hand, and once we produce them in large scale inexpensively, then its like any other thing that people want to have with them, he said.

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Researchers Developing Device That Could Detect COVID-19 Using Your Smartphone - WCCO | CBS Minnesota