Tag: University of Washington

The timeline has slipped to the right and the projected death toll has trended upward in a new projection from the creators of a closely watched computer model for the course of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak.

Tonight’s update from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation raises the outlook for the cumulative U.S. death toll through Aug. 4 from the 67,641 fatalities projected on April 22 to a new figure of 74,073.

That’s creeping closer to the death toll of 81,114 that IHME laid out in its first projection, way back in late March. Since then, the figures have gone as high as 93,000 and as low as 60,000.

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The University of Washington School of Medicine is looking for people who have tested positive for COVID-19 to participate in a clinical trial aimed at finding out whether a controversial drug called hydroxychloroquine can keep them from having to be hospitalized.

Word of UW Medicine’s clinical trial comes after reports about a study at Veterans Health Administration medical centers in which COVID-19 patients who took hydroxychloroquine, which is typically used to treat malaria and autoimmune disease, died at higher rates than those who didn’t take the drug.

Today, the Food and Drug Administration warned that hydroxychloroquine carries “known risks” of potentially deadly heart complications — and said the drug should be used in supervised settings such as clinical trials, where the risks can be better studied and mitigated.

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The University of Washington epidemiologists who set up a widely watched model projecting the future course of the coronavirus outbreak have translated those projections into suggested time frames for loosening strict shelter-at-home orders across the country.

For Washington state, that time frame is the week of May 18, which is two weeks longer than the current expiration date for Gov. Jay Inslee’s “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order.

Based on the current projections from UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, four states — Montana, Vermont, West Virginia and Hawaii — could loosen their restrictions as early as the week of May 4. Other states, ranging from Massachusetts and North Dakota to Arizona, may have to wait until the week of June 8 or later.

Those projected dates could shift, of course, depending on how the institute tweaks its models, which it’s done repeatedly over the past month. And in the end, it’s up to the nation’s governors, not researchers, to determine how strict their social distancing policies are.

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The University of Washington School of Medicine’s Virology Lab is reporting encouraging results from trial runs of a new test from Abbott Laboratories that detects the antibodies created by people who have had COVID-19, whether they knew they had it or not.

“This is a really fantastic test,” Keith Jerome, who leads UW Medicine’s virology program, told reporters today. He said UW’s lab could process 4,000 samples per day starting next week, and conceivably ramp up to 14,000 samples per day within a couple of weeks.

The test will be made available through health care providers, in medical clinics or perhaps through workplaces. It analyzes blood that’s drawn from patients, and looks for the telltale antibodies that a body’s immune system creates to defend against the coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2.

Epidemiologists say knowing who has had the virus will be key to tracking the true spread of COVID-19, and giving assurances to people who are returning to school and work — particularly in front-line jobs ranging from first responders and health care workers to grocery store clerks.

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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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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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