Tag: Coronavirus

A Seattle epidemiologist who warned about the threat posed by novel coronavirus when it was a novelty now says he sees a path to stopping the pandemic.

But it’ll take more than just staying at home for a couple of weeks, Trevor Bedford of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center said today in a series of tweets.

“This is the Apollo program of our times,” Bedford wrote.

Bedford, who analyzed genetic data to figure out that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus had been spreading stealthily in the U.S. for six weeks, began with the standard advice on social distancing.

Although social distancing can “flatten the curve,” a recently published study found that the strategy isn’t likely to bring an end to the outbreak by itself. There’s a good chance that the outbreak would rebound once the restrictions were relaxed.

The study, led by researchers at Imperial College London, concluded that stringent social distancing would have to be maintained until a vaccine is developed – which could take 18 months or more. And the financial cost of maintaining the strategy that long may be unacceptably steep.

“This is the catch-22 as presented by the report,” Bedford tweeted.

Is there a way out? “I have hope that we can solve this thing by doing traditional shoe leather epidemiology of case finding and isolation, but at scale, using modern technology,” Bedford said.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Seattle’s tech community is well-represented in the first group of participants to get their shots in the first U.S. clinical trial of a vaccine for coronavirus.

The first volunteer in line was Jennifer Haller, a veteran of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch space venture. Haller now serves as operations manager for Attunely, a Seattle startup that uses machine learning to help debt collection agencies improve their recovery strategies.

“I’m doing great,” Haller told GeekWire from her home after she got her injection at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle. “My arm isn’t sore at all, so it’s even better than a flu shot.”

Attunely’s founder and CEO, Scott Ferris, was supportive of Haller’s participation. “We are very proud of her!” he told GeekWire in an email.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Computer modeling of the coronavirus outbreak’s course in China, in the weeks before a travel shutdown was imposed on Jan. 23, suggest that 86% of the infections went undocumented.

Those undocumented infections were about half as contagious as the documented cases, but were the source of two-thirds of the documented cases, according to a study published online today by the journal Science.

The findings parallel other research into the role of what’s known as stealth or cryptic transmission in spreading the potentially deadly virus. They also underscore the importance of widespread testing, even if patients aren’t experiencing serious symptoms, particularly during the early phases of transmission.

Get the story on GeekWire.

Federal public health officials say they’ll start setting up an expanded system of coronavirus test centers this week, but acknowledge that pent-up demand could overwhelm them.

“We will have a spike in our curve,” Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, said today at a White House briefing. She asked the general public to give priority to healthcare workers, first responders and high-risk individuals who need testing.

Birx advised hospitals and laboratories to have enough supplies to process what could be tens of thousands of tests nationwide.

“Make sure you have enough pipette tips, pipetters and all the equipment you need to run this laboratory,” she said. “You know what you need. Make sure you have that, and have that available for these tests.”

A lack of testing capability – due to early policy decisions as well as flaws in the first batches of tests provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – seriously hampered U.S. response to the coronavirus outbreak. It’s only been in the past few weeks that more capability has come online in Washington state, one of the hotspots for the outbreak’s spread.

Get the full story on GeekWire.