Tag: Coronavirus

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Can travel limits hold back a pandemic?

Airport workers wear face masks at China’s Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport. (UN News Photo / Jing Zhang)

Comparisons of the real-world spread of the COV-19 coronavirus with computer models indicate that the travel restrictions imposed by authorities in China and other nations have delayed the progress of the outbreak by a matter of days or weeks.

The models suggest that the best way to mitigate the epidemic isn’t through travel restrictions, but through early detection, public health interventions and behavioral changes.

The open-access findings were published today by the journal Science, by a research team including scientists from the U.S., Italy and China.

Elizabeth Halloran, a biostatistician who works at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington, is a member of the team. She told GeekWire that the right public health strategies will give researchers more of an opportunity to develop diagnostics for COVID-19 infections as well as the signs of past infection.

“The early detection and isolation of cases, quarantine and social distancing are the bedrock of good public health practice in an outbreak,” Halloran said in an email to GeekWire. “They will slow things down, gaining time for better preparation.”

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UW reports extra coronavirus test capacity

Lab workers process coronavirus test samples at UW Medicine’s virology lab. (UW Medicine Photo)

The University of Washington School of Medicine says its virology lab is now capable of performing 1,000 genetic tests for the COVID-19 coronavirus every day — but all that capacity hasn’t yet fully come into play.

“We’ve performed a little more than 400 tests to date over this week,” Alex Greninger, assistant director of UW Medicine Clinical Virology Laboratories, explained in an email.  “We have much more capacity to perform tests than we are currently receiving.  We perform tests on the specimens we are sent.  Our current capacity in just over a thousand tests per day, and we are building out to perform 4,000 to 5,000 per day.”

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Washington governor promises virus relief

Gov. Inslee and VP Pence
Vice President Mike Pence gives an elbow bump to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee during a news briefing about the coronavirus outbreak. (Global News via YouTube)

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and other state officials say they’re acting to reduce medical costs for people who have to be tested or treated for the COVID-19 coronavirus.

The state will cover the costs of testing for state residents who don’t have health insurance, Inslee said today at a news briefing in Olympia.

“For the uninsured in our state, whose doctors believe they need testing, I am announcing that we have the authority and intention to cover those costs by the state of Washington,” Inslee said.

The University of Washington’s virology lab is ramping up the Seattle area’s capacity for testing people who may have been infected with the COV-19 coronavirus, but the tests have to be ordered by health professionals.

Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, meanwhile, issued an emergency order to Washington state health insurers, requiring them to waive copays and deductibles for any consumer requiring coronavirus testing.

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Health officials advise people to work from home

An artist’s conception shows microscopic coronavirus particles. (CDC Illustration)

As the coronavirus epidemic widens, public health officials in Seattle-King County are recommending that people work at home if possible — and that large gatherings of people should be postponed if feasible.

The recommendations were issued today in an advisory that also updated the statistics for the epidemic’s spread in King County. Ten new confirmed cases were reported, including one additional death. That brings the total for King County to 31 confirmed cases, including nine deaths.

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UW Medicine ramps up new coronavirus lab test

Coronavirus particles
A new lab test to detect the COVID-19 coronavirus is ready for prime time. (UW Medicine via YouTube)

The University of Washington School of Medicine is moving forward with a new clinical lab test for the COVID-19 coronavirus, and plans to be able to test up to 1,500 samples per day by the end of the week.

Implementation of the test, which will be available only through physicians and healthcare providers, was announced today. The effort follows up on the Food and Drug Administration’s announcement that it would allow labs to develop their own diagnostic tests for the virus under expedited approval.

Also today, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it’s committing an additional $5 million to help public health agencies in the Seattle area enhance their capacity to detect the virus. The response to the coronavirus’ spread was stymied in the Seattle area, where the first U.S. cases were reported, because effective lab tests weren’t available in the first weeks of the epidemic.

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Analysis points to fast spread of coronavirus

Travis Bedford
Trevor Bedford, a researcher at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discusses how genome sequencing is being used to track the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting. (Fred Hutch News Service Photo / Natalie Myers)

An evolutionary analysis based on the genome sequences of COVID-19 coronavirus samples taken from patients in the Seattle area suggests that the number of infections doubles roughly every six days, which translates into hundreds of infections over the course of the past six weeks.

So far, 18 cases have been confirmed in Western Washington, including 14 in King County and four in Snohomish County, north of Seattle. As of today, five patients have died — four in King County and one in Snohomish County.

But the analysis laid out in a series of tweets from Trevor Bedford, a researcher at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who specializes in the study of viral dynamics, concludes that many more people are likely to be part of a chain of infections leading from the first patient in the U.S. to be diagnosed with the virus. Some probably passed along the virus even though they didn’t know they were infected — a phenomenon known as “cryptic transmission.”

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Scientists get a fix on coronavirus’ deadly weapon

Coronavirus spike protein
These diagrams show the protein structure for the “spike” that’s used by the coronavirus known as COVID-19 to force its way into cells. The diagram at left shows the spike with a molecular key known as the RBD in the “down” position. The middle diagram shows the RBD-up conformation, and the diagram at right shows the spike on the SARS virus for comparison’s sake. (Wrapp, Wang et al. / UT-Austin / NIH via Science / AAAS)

Biochemists have created the first 3-D, atomic-scale map of key proteins in the killer coronavirus, opening up new possibilities for developing treatments and a vaccine.

Researchers at the University of Washington and its Institute for Protein Design are among the sleuths who’ll be taking advantage of the new clues.

The map shows the 3-D arrangement of proteins in the molecular “spike” that the virus known as COVID-19 uses to force its way into the cells that it infects. Once the virus gains entry, it delivers genetic code that takes control of the cells to spread the infection.

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Boeing braces for impact of China’s virus outbreak

Randy Tinseth
Randy Tinseth, vice president for marketing at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, takes a question during the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance’s annual meeting in Lynnwood, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

LYNNWOOD, Wash. — One of Boeing’s top market analysts says the concerns stirred up by China’s Wuhan coronavirus outbreak will affect airline profitability, passenger air traffic — and the economy as a whole.

Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said that effect is likely to throw an additional twist into his generally optimistic outlook for the aviation market in 2020.

He laid out Boeing’s outlook for the next year, and for the next 20 years, today during the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance’s annual conference at the Lynnwood Convention Center.

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