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Study focuses on tips for coping with COVID-19

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

Can a daily dose of tips sent to your smartphone help you stay sane during a pandemic? That’s what a study planned by the University of Washington’s Center for the Science of Social Connection and SurveySignal aims to find out.

The UW center’s director, psychologist Jonathan Kanter, said the call for volunteers went out last week. As of today, nearly 1,000 people have enrolled — but there’s still a chance to get involved.

“We are hoping for 2,000,” Kanter told GeekWire in an email. “We will continue to enroll until we are full, which probably will be in a week or so.”

Study participants will be asked to take a short survey on their smartphone, every evening for four weeks. The survey will serve as a quick self-check of each person’s mood, social well-being and health.

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UW Medicine to test all patients for coronavirus

UW Medicine hospital room
UW Medicine says it’s taking measures to ensure that health care workers can safely care for hospital patients amid the coronavirus pandemic. (UW Medicine via YouTube)

The University of Washington’s medical system says it’s begun testing all patients admitted to its hospitals for coronavirus.

The change in policy recognizes the fact that some patients may carry the virus that causes COVID-19 even if they don’t have the best-known symptoms of the disease, such as fever or a dry cough.

“We are finding people who are asymptomatic who have COVID in their nasopharynx when we swab them,” Chloe Bryson-Cahn, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said in a video about the policy change.

UW Medicine spokeswoman Susan Gregg said the previous policy was to test only patients who were being admitted with COVID-19 symptoms. “Now we will be testing all patients admitted to the hospitals even if they do not have symptoms,” she told GeekWire in an email. “This is similar to some of our surveillance activities to see who may be colonized with a particular resistant bacteria.”

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Scientists chart weak spots in coronavirus protein

Coronavirus protein structure
A cryo-EM map of a portion of the novel coronavirus’ protein structure shows several substructures, including a hairpin-shaped protein that hadn’t been identified previously. (Gao et al. / Science / AAAS)

Chinese researchers say they’ve mapped out a key protein structure in the virus that causes COVID-19, including the likeliest target for the antiviral drug remdesivir.

What’s more, they say that same atomic-scale target, known as nsp12, could be attacked by other types of antiviral drugs.

“This target … could support the development of a cocktail of anti-coronavirus treatments that potentially can be used for the discovery of broad-spectrum antivirals,” the researchers write in a paper published today by the journal Science.

The report boost confidence that remdesivir, which is currently going through accelerated clinical trials at the University of Washington and other research centers across the country, will prove effective for treating COVID-19 patients. It also illustrates how a detailed picture of the coronavirus’ inner workings — provided through a technology known as cryogenic electron microscopy, or cryo-EM — can point to additional strategies for beating the virus.

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Health officials to distribute 20,000 virus test kits

Drive-through testing
A nurse takes samples during a drive-through coronavirus test. (UW Medicine Photo)

Update: These test kits were recalled due to quality control concerns.

To address a worrisome gap in testing for coronavirus, Seattle-King County public health officials say they’ll be distributing more than 20,000 test kits, prioritized for first responders, health care workers and people in high-risk settings such as long-term care facilities and homeless shelters.

The University of Washington School of Medicine is donating 20,000 kits, Public Health – Seattle & King County said today in a blog post.

The Seattle Flu Study, which is partnering with public health officials to track the spread of the outbreak, will make 2,000 of its self-swab kits available to long-term care facilities as part of a study focusing on the virus’ prevalence among health care workers. Seattle Flu Study’s team will also be providing tests to about 100 residents at homeless shelters each week as part of a separate study.

Another 1,000 kits will be made available locally by the Washington State Department of Health for testing emergency medical service providers.

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Blue Origin turns from spaceships to face shields

3-D printing face shield visors
A worker at Blue Origin’s production facility in Kent, Wash., gets 3-D printed face shield visors ready for shipping. (Blue Origin via Twitter)

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture isn’t just turning out parts for rocket ships nowadays: It’s also using 25 of its additive manufacturing machines to turn out 3-D printed visors for hospital face shields.

“Our machines are running 24 hours a day, seven days per week,” Blue Origin said in a posting about the project.

The visors serve as frames for the clear sheets of plastic that serve to protect the faces of health care workers as they treat COVID-19 patients.

About 100 of the plastic visors are produced each day at Blue Origin’s factory in Kent, Wash. They’re shipped off to Stratasys, one of the company’s supply partners, for distribution to hospitals in need around the country.

Stratasys says 40,000 face shields are needed over the course of a week during the coronavirus pandemic.

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UW seeks 25,000 volunteers to try outbreak app

Coronavirus app
Smartphone app
All that’s needed to participate in the HIPPOCRATIC experiment is an Android or Apple smartphone with an internet connection. (UW Medicine via YouTube)

Can a smartphone app generate an early warning for an outbreak of coronavirus, flu, colds or other infections? A project funded by the Pentagon with an assist from the University of Washington aims to find out.

UW Medicine is recruiting 25,000 people nationwide for an app-based experiment called HIPPOCRATIC (which stands for Health and Injury Prediction and Prevention Using Complex Reasoning and Analytic Techniques Integrated on a Cellphone App … with a bit of poetic license.).

The app is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which serves as the Pentagon’s technological think tank.

If the app does what researchers hope, it could provide data for quicker medical diagnoses, and keep people who are ill from returning to school, work or military duty too soon.

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UW Medicine kicks off $50M COVID-19 campaign

COVID-19 testing
A nurse prepares to screen a patient for coronavirus at a drive-through testing station at UW Medical Center – Northwest. (UW Medicine Photo / Randy Carnell)

The CEOs of Amazon and Microsoft are among thousands of people contributing to cover the $50 million in private support that the University of Washington School of Medicine expects to need to cope with the coronavirus outbreak.

So far, more than $20 million in contributions to the UW Medicine Emergency Response Fund have come in from about 3,400 donors, UW Medicine said today.

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Blue Origin confirms three workers have COVID-19

New Shepard capsule
Engineers work on New Shepard’s crew capsule at Blue Origin’s Kent factory. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Three employees at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture have tested positive for coronavirus and are now in quarantine, a spokeswoman for the company says.

One case came to light on April 3, and two other cases were confirmed over the weekend, said Linda Mills, Blue Origin’s vice president of communications.

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Boeing extends virus-related factory shutdown

COVID-19 supply flight
To help relieve the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a Bamboo Airways 787 ferried 287 European citizens and 10 tons of medical assistance from the Vietnamese government to the Czech Republic. (Boeing Airplanes via Twitter)

Boeing says its 14-day suspension of operations at its Puget Sound airplane factories, as well as at its maintenance site at Moses Lake in central Washington state, will be extended until further notice.

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A doctor’s prescription for a safe and sane weekend

Steve Pergam, M.D.
Steve Pergam, an infectious disease expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, answers questions during a Facebook live chat. (Fred Hutch via Facebook)

Need to get out of the house this weekend? Steve Pergam, an epidemiologist at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the University of Washington and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, acknowledges that maintaining social distancing can leave you feeling “a little discombobulated” – but there are ways to get together safely with friends.

Pergam talked about the COVID-19 pandemic and answered questions about coping with it today during a Facebook live chat, conducted from his home study.

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