Dueling projections for the course of the COVID-19 pandemic are converging on a narrower range of estimates for this summer, as expected, but the longer-term outlook doesn’t call for coronavirus infections to fade away quickly.
Tag: Coronavirus
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How will protests affect the pandemic?
Epidemiologists say the crowding conditions associated with mass protests over police violence seem likely to add dozens of people, or perhaps even hundreds, to the daily death toll from coronavirus infections.
But they acknowledge that that these sorts of assessments involve a tradeoff between public health and social justice.
“Racism and state-sponsored violence are critical public health issues,” Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, wrote in a weekend string of tweets. “We should also acknowledge that the specific action of large-scale public protest at this moment during the COVID-19 pandemic may result in perhaps more than 10 but less than 100 deaths per day.”
In response to feedback, Bedford later revised his estimate to “a highly speculative” guess of more than 50 but less than 500 extra deaths for each day of protest.
Bedford and other coronavirus trackers pointed out that the protests are coming amid widespread relaxation of strict rules on social distancing and business activities. That will make it all the more difficult to tease out the specific causes behind what’s likely to be an upswing in infections.
“The protests and potential to transmit virus are on a background of general societal opening,” Bedford said. “It feels as though we’ve largely given up on controlling the epidemic and have resigned ourselves to living alongside it.”
A public-private partnership called Operation Warp Speed is aiming to get multiple vaccines approved by the end of the year to protect against COVID-19 — but two veterans of the vaccine development process say there’s a long road ahead, with no wormholes in sight to reduce the travel time.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said this week that there should be a “couple hundred million doses” of vaccines available by the start of next year.
That’s an ambitious timetable, according to John Mascola, head of NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center; and Larry Corey, a virologist at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.coron
“I don’t think either John or I are particularly happy with Tony telling everybody that it’s here by January, but if everything goes well, that’s definitely possible,” Corey said today during a webcast presented by Fred Hutch.
After a weeklong review of safety data, the World Health Organization announced today that it’s ending a “pause” in the use of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine in an international clinical trial of potential COVID-19 therapies.
Seattle’s Infectious Disease Research Institute is working with Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine to multiply the doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine by 30 to 100 times. Other partners in the effort include Seattle-based PATH and Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.
If the project proceeds as planned, Baylor and its partners could repurpose a vaccine candidate originally created to counter a different coronavirus-based disease known as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, to fight off COVID-19.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is one of the sponsors of bipartisan legislation aimed at ensuring that coronavirus tracing apps protect consumer privacy.
The Exposure Notification Privacy Act relates to automated contact tracing tools that are currently being developed by companies ranging from Apple and Google to PricewaterhouseCoopers and Juniper Networks.
Such systems typically involve monitoring a user’s movements, and issuing an alert if it’s determined that the user has previously come in close contact with another user who tests positive for COVID-19. The proximity data is typically uses Bluetooth data to monitor proximity.
Public health officials for Seattle and King County today acknowledged the seriousness of the crisis sparked by last week’s killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other confrontations across the country — and said the continuing coronavirus pandemic is making the situation more difficult.
“We understand the difficult choices that people were faced with this past weekend,” Public Health – Seattle & King County said today in a blog posting. “Many in our community grappled with attending protests to stand up against these injustices while also wanting to keep our community safe from further spread of COVID-19.”
Officials urged residents to stick with the guidelines that they’ve been recommending for months, including the advice to wear face coverings, stay at least 6 feet away from others, and avoid large gatherings if you’re ill.
“Outdoor gatherings are lower risk than indoor gatherings,” the public health agency said in its Q&A. “The larger the gathering, and the longer you’re there, the higher the risk of catching or spreading COVID-19.”
The agency said you should also “do your best to avoid situations where people are shouting or singing, as these activities can spread more virus into the air.”
Two newly published studies shed light on the origins and spread of the coronavirus pandemic, starting with bats and pangolins in China and ending up with New York’s dramatically deadly outbreak.
One study, published today in the open-access journal Science Advances, analyzed 43 genome sequences from three strains of coronavirus similar to the one that causes COVID-19 in humans. These strains were identified in bats and in pangolins, anteater-like animals prized for their scales. The two pangolins that yielded samples of coronavirus were smuggled into China and seized by customs officials.
The type of coronavirus that has caused the human pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, is more similar to bat viruses than to pangolin viruses. But a key piece of genetic material, relating to the ability of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to bind itself to human cells, was identified in pangolin viruses but not in bat viruses.
None of the viruses that were studied is likely to be in the direct line leading to the virus that made the leap to humans, but their diversity suggests that SARS-CoV-2 went through cross-species evolution before making the leap to humans.
Epidemiologists are coming around to the view that the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S., involving a Snohomish County traveler who got sick in mid-January, may not have been the one that touched off the West Coast’s coronavirus outbreak.
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Boeing resumes 737 MAX jet production
Boeing says it has resumed 737 MAX production at its factory in Renton, Wash., with more than a dozen initiatives implemented to enhance product quality and workplace safety amid the coronavirus pandemic.